The Dark and Early Report: In Which I Enter A Time Warp

When I made my declaration this weekend that starting today, I would get up EARLY to try and get my words in before work, you might have imagined that I’d be dragging my fanny out of bed at 5 o’clock.  Do you not know me at all?  I normally get up at 6:15 and that’s hard enough.  We’re going in baby steps.  Hubs usually gets up at 5:45, so I determined that I’d get up when he did, which should give me a full hour to write after I finish morning routine stuff.

I don’t know for sure, as my eyes weren’t actually working, but I don’t think he woke me up until 5:55.  He had a bad bout of insomnia last night and was already up, so probably didn’t look at a clock until then.  Because otherwise, it somehow took me a full 12 minutes to shuffle into the bathroom, pee, put in my contacts, and change into my workout clothes.

Then came the shuffling in the kitchen to throw together hubby’s lunch.  Shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes.  Apparently took longer.

So then I go move the coffee table and turn on the Wii, but have to wait until hubs gets his stuff for work so that he’s not having to step over me (my plan really hinged on him being in the shower during this portion of the morning).

Then I finally get started on the workout.  I don’t know whether I just hit the next difficulty level or if there are just that many more exercises to be done on the balance board, but the workout itself was longer, with new stuff that I had to watch the tutorial for.  And I can definitively say that sun salutations should not be done on a balance board.  There is NOT ENOUGH ROOM for BIG FEET and hands.  The rest of the exercises went okay.  By my calculations, I SHOULD have been DONE with my workout BEFORE hubs left for work at 6:45.  I wasn’t.  It was 7 by the time I hit the meditation portion of the program.  Ten minutes.  Which was another epic fail because I had to get up to turn off the fan.  Then to turn off the dishwasher (the blasted thing seems to turn on every time you shut the door, whether it’s time to run or not).  Then to get up and grab my snuggie and a pillow because I was lying on the floor in corpse pose right under the arctic blast of the AC vent.  And of course the Energizing meditation really wound up being more like a 7 minute nap for me, which really defeated the purpose because then I wanted to go back to bed.

At that point I was running late.

So I snagged my shower, fixed breakfast, and sat down to write.  I managed 78 words before I realized I was back off schedule, and raced to get through the rest of the getting ready routine and wound up being late for work.  Again.

How is it that I got up 30 minutes early and wound up losing 40 minutes? 

I conclude I somehow entered a time warp.

To expedite things, I’ll prep as much as I can of hubby’s lunch before bed tonight and actually set my alarm to make sure I’m really out of bed at 5:45 tomorrow.  And it would help A LOT if I take the time to figure out where I’m GOING next with the scene BEFORE bed so that there isn’t the additional staring at the page where the hmmmm turns into zzzzzz.  So we’ll see how it goes tomorrow.  I’m giving this whole thing a week.  If I’m not managing to produce words by the end, I’m not getting up early.  Because, let’s face it, I am a thing to be pitied when I get up in the morning.

8 thoughts on “The Dark and Early Report: In Which I Enter A Time Warp

  1. I’ve tried to make myself get up earlier so I can exercise in the mornings, but I just can’t make myself do it. Maybe you’ll inspire me so that I can start doing that in the mornings, leaving me more time for writing and other things in the evenings.

    Btw, I think your post was hilarious and I needed the laugh this morning. :0D

    1. Somehow I used to get up at 5 and go to the gym before work/school for YEARS. I really don’t know how I did it. I am actually quite capable of getting up and exercising…it’s the using my brain part that I suck at.

  2. Save this post. One of your characters will one day be in this situation and you’ll have the scene all written.

    I think you’ve got the right idea getting more done the night before so you can do what you palnned. I get up two hours befor I go to work (Only 30 min of that is commute) and stuff like preparing lunch the night before makes a huge difference.

  3. I’m a big believer in working *with* your natural biorhythms rather than against them. When I try to get up any earlier than strictly necessary, I can’t function and end up losing time just as you did. It’s not worth it to me.

    Which is why instead I’m up until 1 or 2am most nights…because even if I’m tired, I can still work at night. In the morning, I’m running completely on autopilot unless I can sleep until at least 7:30am (which is never during the week – I have to be up by 6am…and I don’t start actually thinking until around 9-10am).

    I wish you the best of luck on this…hopefully it will work out better for you tomorrow…

    1. ME TOO! Sadly life really doesn’t work around my natural biorhythms. I could happily stay up until midnight, sleep til 9, have a nice relaxing start to my morning and get loads done after that…but “real” business hours just don’t work with that body clock!

      1. Friend of mine says she gets up at the crack of nine every morning! … thankfully I work for myself and can design my time so that I write when I’m at my best.

  4. I totally sympathize, Kait. And while I agree with you and Jamie both on the futility of working against your biorhythms, I have this impediment that forces me into a daily schedule. It’s called motherhood. 😉 Seriously, if I didn’t have kids or if they were capable of getting themselves to school, I would also fall into a swingshift kind of pattern. But unfortunately, I have to be up at a certain time to get them all out the door.

    On the flip side, I’m very fortunate to have their school hours to write. This is no small thing. But with summer looming, I’m contemplating what I’m going to do to get new words down every day. My computer is in my bedroom now, so that makes it tough to write while DH is sleeping. But experience of previous summers tells me that actually creating words when the kids are up and about is a true exercise in futility. I can do social networking, blogging, even some client work when they’re around, but create new fiction? Forget it. We’ll see what happens when all four beasties are here for three months….

  5. Love that picture of Garfield. I should have expanded. When I get up at 5 am to write, all I do is shower and dress (which is a pain cos I don’t turn on any lights. Try sorting socks… You’d think I would learn to set my clothes out the night before). Then I head to the dark living room and write by (in the winter) street light or (in the summer) daylight. No other darn distractions! I’d love coffee, but that would be too distracting. There’d be dishes to do, for one thing. And of course I draft with paper and pen, so there’s no internet to fall into…

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