It is an undeniable fact that the older you get the earlier you get up until we all turn into our parents/grandparents and get up before the sun is up. Doing so also usually means being productive early in the day. I have noticed at several points in my life so far where I made a sudden transition into a slightly earlier wake up time where it was a choice to get up at a certain hour and not sleep in later. Now don't get me wrong, there were years and years of time where I had to get up earlier than I ever wanted to. For the first year and a half of High School I had to get up at 4:30 am in order to catch the bus to school. There was that year in college where I had to take mandatory classes for my degree, but they were both taught by the same professor and he only taught classes from 7 am-10 am. These were times that I was getting up earlier than I wanted.
I remember the first time that I woke up "early" and kept the schedule and it was for personal reasons. I started getting up about an hour before anyone else in the house did so that I could use the time to play video games. It was the only chance I had to do anything for myself. It was liberating. There were other times as more normal work entered my life, I started jobs that worked normal working hours of 8 am- 5 pm etc. Some of these were forced on me and some were elective earlier times. There was a period after one of my deployments that I would get up at 5 am and just sit around doing nothing. Always the promise of being productive early in the day but mostly it was about sitting there in the quiet and being able to hear the quiet.
In the last couple of days I have run across quotes and memes that talk about doing things early in the day. One alludes to doing things you don't like first thing so as to get them out of the way, another says doing all of the important tasks first means you have more time to play later and so on. The things that most of our parents actually told us when we were kids and we never believed/ignored because play time was more fun. A lot of this has been coming across my screen lately. Not sure if the content I am looking at has become slightly more mature or if there is a sudden realization of productivity in the world. The one thing I have not seen posted yet but I will post here for anyone reading is the old adage "The early bird gets the worm". Cliche as it sounds that is what most of these other things I have come across state, just in different words.
The whole point of this is to say that as we get older and more responsible we typically lead healthier more stable lives where we get up early and be productive first thing in the day (which also means that we typically go to bed at an earlier hour as well). Is this me entering the next phase of getting up earlier in the day to perform at task? Are the plants I planted calling me to get up just a bit earlier in the day to take care of them before work? Is it a phase or will it last? Or was it the fact that one of the curtains in the bed room did not get shut fully and a bit of light crept in and hit me in the face just so that I woke up early? Was it a single occurrence or will it last a couple of days, a week, a month, till daylight savings hits this spring and it gets light an hour later? Wait... is my sleep schedule being dictated by how bright it is? All of these important questions on why someone who sleeps like a baby does not know why they woke up an hour early, took the trash out and made sure all of their bills were paid before their first alarm went off this morning.
Oh, and this post was written before work as well...
