Morning or night? It seems that everyone has a preference. Some people are "early birds" and get up even before the crack of dawn while others are "night owls" and would rather work and play under the moonlight.
Me, I do nights. Always have, always will probably. Let's put it this way, I don't even own an alarm clock anymore. With kids in the house, they wake me up!
I've been pondering this early/late issue very much lately. I've read, over the years, several accounts of authors who describe their days as waking up at 4 or 5 am and writing until it was time to go to work, or time to get the kids up. Pfft! Please. Kudos to them - and to you, if you fall into this category. My heart and head might be willing to go this route, but my body quite forcefully states, "hell, no!" Of course, the body wins this war.
I can understand the sense of waking up early. If a person goes to bed at a reasonable time, it stands to reason that he or she will wake up refreshed and rearing to go. On my end, I don't care what time I hit the sheets the night before, if the clock reads any time before 8 am, I'm useless.
Going back to why I've been mulling this over: I'm really wondering if my keeping to a PM schedule effects my writing, in a consistent, writing-every-day sense. I try to write something every day but there are some days when the kids have been going nutso all day and the animals are just as crazed and the husband gets on the nerves and dinner was a hastily put together mess that you don't even want to admit you served to your family and then -- when everyone finally settles down and gets out of your way and the burnt pans are scraped clean -- it is so late and you are so exhausted that even taking a soothing bath seems like too much trouble. On these days, I can't seem to muster anything to write. Do AM people have mornings like this, too? Just on a backward scale? I really want to know.
You see, if morning people have their rotten AM's every once in awhile (I cannot begin to think what would set it off, however, unless it was a bad sleeping night), then I can continue to be content with my PM schedule, confidant in knowing that rough patches are going to hit and to simply weather through.
If it makes you feel better, EVERY one of my AM's is awful. I gripe at my 6 year old, he gripes back, and the 4 year old laughs all the way to school. (Kid's like his father that way.) The 6 yr old's like me. We both hate mornings, and you know, that's never gonna change. But I'm okay with that. AM people are sick. Seriously. Sick. :)
ReplyDeleteThe Night Owl, er, Marie