Scrolling through abandoned drafts, I came across this:
This morning I was up early. I had set the alarm for 5am. I woke up a little after 4, briefly considered getting up, then decided to maximize those last 4o minutes with sleep – which felt good but not good enough. I didn’t want to be up early. I had some things I wanted to get done – which is almost always a guarantee that I will avoid doing them if I’m up early and resenting it. The song in my head is “A Long December” by the Counting Crows. When I first woke up it was a different song, but I can’t remember which.
I used to be an early riser. I used to get things done in the morning – or at least I think I did. There was a time in my life when I would get up early (4am ish) only to walk out to the sofa and go to sleep for another hour. I think there was a time when I exercised in the morning. The details of my past routines have disappeared into some memory hole. I don’t remember how I used to live – which isn’t a bad line to start a poem (pause, write that down somewhere else).
Over the last few years, if I’ve gotten up early, it seems that I did so in order to deliberately loaf about… to spend a few minutes daydreaming or putting some thoughts down… to stretch the morning quiet for as long as I can before the day’s obligations compel me to shake a leg and get a move on.
Over the last few years, I’ve grown accustomed to letting my body determine when I should wake. I’ve learned to appreciate my natural cadences and rhythms. On the mornings when I break from that natural timing, I can feel the internal fight. It drags me to sofa. It tempts me with a short nap. It tells me that this is bullshit, that this is no way to start a day – go back to bed, try again.
I used to be one of those fools who would think, and almost believe, that I can sleep when I’m dead. Now, I happen to like sleep and death… well death seems like a release from the daily bullshit of life.
Work, these past few years, has become the unnatural part of life. Were I to let my mind and body flow like a river, maybe a small part of it would form a gully and flow towards work, but most of it would flow towards slow mornings and equally slow afternoons. Were I financially independent, I would still do some work (trying to make the world a better place), but I don’t think it’d be 9-5, 5 days a week.
I think everyone should have at least one disruptive phase when they risk becoming a drunkard or a gambler or an artist or something equally disruptive and hedonistic. I’ve never been that daring. I’ve never been willing to walk that close to the edge.