I am not a morning person.
We all know I'm not divulging any state secrets here. The only reason I even get UP in the morning is to avoid that horrid caffeine withdrawal headache that rips my skull open if I don't consume mass quantities of coffee.
However, I do have my contrary side. As soon as I say one thing, I immediately counter it with something else. I'm my very own debate team (which can be more annoying than entertaining, believe me).
So what my contrary side wants to say is this: I do see the value of doing things in the morning, especially those early hours that have never made the acquaintance of high noon.
(I still don't know what the yoga instructor means when he says my spine will feel the thrill of confidence and creativity. My spine seems a lot more emotionally subdued.) Lately I've been doing a 30 minute yoga stretching thing from a DVD, and THEN I get my coffee. I sit down and do some 10-minute fun writing, or I jot down some notes that have popped into my head when I'm supposed to be meditating while folding my body into an origami crane.
However, I honestly feel like I have a better day when I start out with these activities. Most days I try to convince myself – okay, let's be brutally honest – I flat out LIE and tell myself I'll start writing "in just a minute".
Do I even need to tell you how many days I don't get started until the sun goes down? Guess it's a good thing that we're moving to Daylight Savings Time soon, since the sun will be gone earlier in the day, meaning fewer minutes will be waiting around for me to "start writing".
I don't even want to think about how many minutes have died believing I was going to show up soon.
The worst part is that I spend way too much of my time and energy convincing myself I don't want to do these productive things, and then I try to persuade myself I *should* do them.
So what do I ultimately accomplish in this exhausting battle with both my selves? I keep my resistance strong, and then I feel guilty about making myself impervious to industrious activity.
The next time you check the clock, which you can barely see because night has descended, you exclaim, with genuine heartfelt amazement, "Wow! Where did the day go?" When you resist getting started, the day speeds past you. You tell yourself you'll get going at the top of the hour, and you dive right back in to your non-productive endeavors.
Yet when I start out doing the things I typically avoid – exercise, jumping right into the writing – and I get them done and out of the way, it's like I have a whole day to enjoy. I'm not wasting an hour (or more) lying to myself or feeling guilty or dodging my responsibilities and my inner critic. I have the whole rest of the day to do what I want.
Somehow there seems to be at least TWICE as much day left. And it's totally guilt-free enjoyment. It's like the universe is rewarding you with extra time for getting your chores done. The same way it takes time away from you when you poke around Twitter and Facebook all day long while "getting ready" to work.
It took me a while to figure this time-stretching thing out, and now that I have, I'm actually more excited about mornings.
Surprisingly, so is my inner contrarian.
Donna, Rather than a relativistic time dilation/contraction, I think that you may have stumbled on the old mind-matter conflict that has haunted philosophers since the beginning of time.
We are all made of atoms and molecules ...right?
Yet the mind doesn't behave like atoms and molecules .... right?
Somehow the two are intimately related though so that the morphines generated during your stretching exercises act as pleasure/stimulation on your mind. This in turn makes you want to write.
Trouble is you need the pleasure/ stimulation to get you started on the exercise in the first place.
Its a problem! LOL
If it weren't for the spin-off complications, I think I might get a dog as a pet. A morning walk across the common is then guaranteed and will break straight into the pleasure/stimulation cycle, ensuring a productive day.
Hummm .. or I might try persuading Mrs Q to experiment with morning sex. Purely as a way of boosting productivity of course! *wink*
Posted by: Quantum | September 24, 2011 at 06:54 AM
Q, you're making my head hurt with all that science talk! LOL I better have some more coffee.
You're right about the pleasure/stimulation thing though. It's definitely a "chicken or the egg" conundrum, because you need one to start the other, but where do you start? LOL
I think your solution with Mrs. Q is the way to go. :) All in the name of science. And productivity. LOL
Posted by: Donna Cummings | September 24, 2011 at 08:48 AM
Oh my god this line really got to me - mostly because it's so true:
"I don't even want to think about how many minutes have died believing I was going to show up soon."
I could laugh AND cry at this because it is exactly me.
Can I do morning yoga with you? We can stretch and ignore our pounding headaches and then write our asses off...
Good lucky, lady.
And tell the minutes we'll be there soon....
Posted by: julie gardner | September 26, 2011 at 11:45 AM
Julie, I'm glad you love that line -- can you believe I almost cut it before I posted this? LOL I was too fond of it, though, so it survived.
I'll let the minutes know we're on our way. . .soon. We've got a lot of stretching and writing-our-asses-off to get done too. :)
Posted by: Donna Cummings | September 26, 2011 at 10:30 PM