Good Morning

Wherein Our Heroine has a Hard Time Getting Going.

Morning routines are sacred little things, though they alter over time to fit a changing lifestyle. When I was single, I required 20 minutes from launching out of bed to dashing out the door. My insane mad dash towards the Metro had some method in the madness: if I got up too early, I would relax, take my time and end up incredibly late. Breakfast was optional.

Enter my breakfast-loving, slow-starting husband, and my cherished A.M. sprint started to mutate. We commuted together for a time, and leaving the house together entailed a kind of Chinese puzzle bathroom routine, which took longer than my standard 20 minutes. The addition of the dog completed the metamorphosis. When I was still working, he had to be walked before I left, so I ended up going from someone who had 20 minutes to get ready to someone who had two hours to get ready.

So now, though theoretically I could sleep until ten and work late into the evening searching for job opportunities and writing cover letters, I still get up somewhere between 6:30 and 7:00, stump sleepily downstairs (imagine the Grimace with flannel pajamas and bed-head) and head straight for the coffee, which wakes me up enough for me to start worrying about what I'm going to write about today.

But why did I, a non-morning person if ever one breathed, choose to structure my day this way? I think part of it is that somewhere I have in me the genes of midwestern farmers who would probably consider that lying about in bed is only appropriate if you gave birth to a child five minutes ago. Otherwise, get up! There's work to be done!

These genes are leavened by a certain postmodern "why bother" sensibility. I have no fields to be plowed, no horses to feed. Hence, I get up - but I consider that I've accomplished something because I write a few paragraphs, publish them for all to see and don't receive a dime for it.

There's a sort of poetry in that combination... but pardon me, the postmodern exercise routine beckons.

Posted: Tuesday - March 23, 2004 at 07:46 AM | |