I want to be a morning person so badly. The vision I have of myself — the one I’ve clearly curated from too many Pinterest boards and motivational Instagram accounts I follow at midnight — is genuinely beautiful. She wakes up at five-thirty. She has a routine. She drinks her first glass of water before caffeine like some kind of psychopath and enjoys it. She moves through her morning with intention and grace and probably has a linen apron on for no reason.
That woman is not me. She has never been me. I’m not even sure she exists.
Here is what actually happens when I wake up in the morning:
First, there is a negotiation. Not with another person — with myself. A tense, ugly, fully internal negotiation that goes something like: “You set three alarms. You knew what you were doing when you set them. You set them with good intentions. Those intentions meant nothing.” The first alarm goes off and I dismiss it with the reflexes of someone who has been doing this for decades, which I have. The second alarm, same. By the third alarm I’ve entered a phase I can only describe as bargaining — not bargaining with God, but with time itself. I could technically do this in twenty minutes. People do it faster. Athletes, start-up founders, my mother. Probably.
I hit snooze.
There’s a whole personality type built around being a morning person and I would like you to know that I have tried to inhabit it multiple times. I’ve bought the cute water bottles. I’ve downloaded the sunrise alarm apps that are supposed to ease you awake with gentle light instead of the sound of your own personal failure. I’ve journaled the night before — tomorrow I will wake up at six and I will walk and I will be centered and I will eat a real breakfast — and then I’ve watched that journal entry get absolutely humiliated by 6:04 a.m.
The problem is not discipline. I am a disciplined person. I run an entire software company’s revenue arm. I have teenagers. I have survived things. I can discipline myself into all kinds of things — proven by the absolute grit with which I survived four divorces — but apparently I draw the defeat line at being conscious and functional before eight o’clock without significant external pressure.
Every six to nine months I convince myself again. That morning walks are wonderful. That a full breakfast cooked for my family helps them thrive. I truly do want to be a morning person. I just am abso-fucking-lutely not.
A meeting I cannot miss. A flight. A child.
Because, come on, people — what do you mean I have to get up with these children for twelve years of school even though I don’t have to be there? What do you mean I have to get them to their sports, their before-school job, their Saturday standardized test at seven-thirty in the morning like that is a thing we are doing? Who made me responsible for morning anything? God — do you know me? Why did you give me this responsibility? I am unprepared, unequipped, and frankly inept at this one specific thing. Couldn’t this have been someone else’s job?
No. Moe. It can’t. Because these are your children. Your responsibilities. Your career.
Meanwhile, Josh wakes up like a person. Fully. Sometimes at 5am, when he has nowhere to be. He doesn’t negotiate with the alarm, he just… gets up. I have been watching this happen for years and I still don’t understand it. What kind of superhuman is this? 5am and happy with a cup of Joe and a smoke on the back porch. Shakes head. It’s fine. Everything is fine.
In my middle age — yes, I said it, we’re moving on — I am learning to accept that which I cannot change. I am not broken. I am just a night person who has spent her entire adult life operating in a morning-person world, quietly resenting every eight a.m. calendar invite that either some very optimistic person or someone operating in a different time zone placed there like that’s a normal thing to do to another human being. I schedule my eleven p.m. emails to land in your inbox during working hours, Karen. The least you can do is meet me at ten.
And can we talk about morning people for a second? Because they are a specific kind of person and I think we need to be honest about that. They bound out of bed. They have opinions about their morning routine that they will share with you, unprompted, in detail. My mother was a morning person when I was young. Always up before everyone else. Always put together. Always on top of breakfast, homework, backpacks, and school lunches. She would say things like “I just feel so much better when I get up early” with a straight face and genuine sincerity, as if sleeping until seven was a moral failing we should all be ashamed of. Nobody is choosing this as a lifestyle preference. We are just built differently. Period.
The night people, meanwhile, are out here doing their best thinking, their best work, their best everything — at ten p.m., when the house is finally quiet and the world has stopped asking things of us. We are not lazy. We are not undisciplined. We are just operating on a schedule that the nine-to-five world was not built for, which is honestly their problem more than ours. My mother has figured this out too, somewhere along the way — trading her 5am wake-up calls for 10pm phone calls with her sisters. She’s my spirit animal now. The woman who once had breakfast on the table before sunrise is now the last one to bed, phone pressed to her ear laughing with her sisters at eleven p.m. Full circle. I’m so proud.
The linen apron woman and I have an understanding. She gets the Pinterest boards. I get the caffeine at whatever hour it is when I decide I absolutely cannot push off being a functional adult any longer.
