I want to be a morning person. I want to be the type to naturally wake up at 7 a.m., spring out of bed and get on with my day. I want to make coffee, frolic through the empty campus streets and have birds sing to me, flowers bursting through the pavement as I walk past.
I would feel like a Disney princess. That would be magical.
The problem is, I struggle to wake up in the morning. This is not a particularly unusual quality, I know, but it’s one that never fails to annoy me. Every morning, I hit snooze on thousands of alarms, mocking the naivety of my idealistic nighttime self who set these far-too-ambitious alarms to begin with.
But even though I hate the waking-up process, I do not hate mornings. In fact, I love them. Especially during the winter when daylight is so fleeting, the morning provides short-lived but beautiful sunshine, bathing my desk in awakening light. It’s the part of the day I most often look forward to.
I love coffee, breakfast and the hope and promise that comes with the beginning of a new day. And while this all sounds very sing-songy, I look a lot less like a Disney princess and a lot more like a Disney villain every time my alarms go off in the morning. The blaring sounds of those awful little repetitive harp noises ring in my ears, forcing me out of sleep. No chirping birds, just repeated, snoozed alarms and harp sounds with an attacking association rather than a peaceful one.
I know it’s a bad habit to repeatedly hit the snooze button, but I just can’t resist. I’m in too deep now. However, it certainly caused quite a few problems for me during my freshman year. In the pre-Zoom world, I woke up at 7:50 a.m. for my 8 a.m., threw on a dress, my glasses and shower shoes and sprinted to my class building that was 10 minutes away. I got there at 8:01.
Impressive? Yes. But good? Productive? Relaxing? Absolutely not. I want to be the kind of person who leisurely sips coffee and writes in their journal or goes on a walk in the peaceful, sunshine-lit streets. Not the type who’s chaotically sprinting in her shower shoes three minutes after waking up.
I love mornings, but I am a night owl. I get bursts of productive energy at midnight, not 8 a.m. I hit snooze over and over again until my attempted 7 a.m. wake-up call becomes 9 a.m., and then 10 a.m.
I want to be a morning person. I’m not sure that day will ever come, but I longingly look forward to it. Until then, my morning routine of coffee and walks and commendable productivity will have to exist in the realm of fiction reserved for Disney princesses, or, perhaps more accurately, Disney villains.
