My futile attempts to write early in the mornings
A fresh breeze is enveloping me the moment I open the kitchen window. For a few moments, I direct all my attention to that welcome contrast to the otherwise hot summer days. Then, I direct my gaze outside, to the rooftops of the neighboring buildings. The sun is just about to rise and the sky looks spectacular. I’m still enchanted by all the colors, when I notice the smell of freshly-brewed coffee. I pick up the cup and take my first sip. Just then, I feel so glad about my decision to get up extra early – finally, I have found some time and solitude for writing. I let my mind wander for a bit, before resolve to get started. But then, just before I put down the cup again, I hear the sounds of footsteps followed by a creaking door. Without looking, I know that my son is standing behind me. I close my eyes and take one last deep and slow breath. I force a smile on my face and then turn around to greet him. My son flashes a genuine smile back at me. I’m about to embrace him, when he already exclaims enthusiastically: “it’s time to play daddy!”.
A week ago, our son’s daycare provider closed for the summer holidays. Since then, we’ve had two kids at home around the clock. This has made it incredibly hard to find those quiet periods of time so crucial for reading, writing and reflection.
I still wanted to uphold my commitment to daily writing, so somehow I needed to make time for it.
Knowing how busy the following days would get, I guessed I’d be fairly exhausted in the evenings. This left me with only one option: the early mornings.
Considering that my son usually wakes up between 6am and 7am and that I was hoping to gain at least an hour, I decided to set my alarm to 5.15am (yes, you read that right)!
I know what you’re probably thinking right now: “gee, he’s craaazzyyy!” – or at least that’s what I used to think of people who got up voluntarily at such an unseemly early time – but trying times call for drastic measures.
By now, I’ve gotten through a full week of early mornings (surprisingly, it wasn’t as hard as I thought). I figure it’s time for a retrospective.
The good:
- By the time my family gets up, I’ve already made progress on work that matters to me. As a result, I no longer worry if I’ll be able to write that day. Instead, I feel calm and accomplished throughout the day.
- Breathing in the fresh morning air, taking in the flavor of freshly-brewed coffee, and running through a few touch-typing exercises has a meditative effect on me. Once I begin to write, I feel like my mind is at peek performance.
- A couple of times, my morning session ended while I was still stuck on a piece of writing. I had already moved on to other parts of my day, when suddenly the perfect phrase or sentence just popped into my head. Apparently, my mind continued to solve problems in the background.
- Since I had already completed writing in the morning, I could spent my evenings with lightweight activities. Thus, I no longer had to engage in deep thought just before bed. As a result, falling asleep had become much easier.
- I got to watch the sunrise every morning. These experiences connected me with nature and felt very meaningful to me.
The bad:
- It turns out that my son has a phase of lightweight sleep around 5.30am. Even though he’s not awake, he occasionally tries to cuddle with me. The moment he notices my absence, he’s wide awake and wants to play.
- Toward the end of the week, my son realized that I got up early every morning and therefore woke up early too. He missed out on a lot of sleep that way and got into a serious sleep deficit.
- On those mornings when I found my plans for solitude thwarted, I felt like something had been stolen from me.
- I’m not sure if it is due to the effects of the coffee fading or due to missing a phase of REM sleep, but for an hour or so around midday I feel really tired.
Tacking all this into account, I decided to stop this experiment. Even though I really enjoyed this special time in the early mornings, it doesn’t quite work for our family right now.
However, I will try this again at some point in the future.