On Getting Up at the Crack of Dawn
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I’m famously lazy. I love lounging. I adore chilling. My favorite of the seven deadly sins is easily sloth. I’ve written about hitting snooze, hell, I even hit snooze a bunch of times this morning! There are few things better than sleeping, snoozing, slothing, and chilling…but you know what also kicks ass sometimes? Getting up super early.
Sure, getting up early is a pain every single time. Even when I’m excited for the day, even when I’m voluntarily getting up early, my body and my brain are always furious with me the moment my alarm goes off in the pitch black. Once you power through that unbelievably thick fog of sleepiness, the world is your oyster. Whether I’m waking up super early to drive someone to the airport, or finishing up all of the work I promised myself I’d do the day before but absolutely did not do, the entire day is ahead of you! You could do a full day’s work and be done by 2 pm! You could take a three-hour nap and wake up just in time for lunch.
There’s a certain magical feeling to being awake when most of the world is still asleep (although, for my friends who work night shifts, east coast banking hours, or have young children, I imagine this novelty has worn off long LONG ago). The world is just so quiet, so calm, so peaceful. Coffee smells better when the sun’s still coming up, McDonald’s breakfast tastes better when consumed before your brain is active enough to really think about what’s in that “sausage” patty, and here in LA, even the freeways are better before those first idiots have a chance to run into each other and ruin your commute!
Back when I was in college, believe it or not, I’d get up super early a few times a week to go surfing. I’m not a religious man and I wouldn’t call myself particularly spiritual either, but when you’re standing there, on the edge of the largest body of water on the planet, with the sun rising behind you…it’s hard not to believe in something bigger than you. As I got older and moved further and further away from the ocean, I stopped getting up at the crack of dawn so often. I forgot about the magic that time holds. The way it feels like, just for a little while, the world is all yours and is full of possibilities.
I’ve recently been reintroduced to the crack of dawn through golf. As cold and dark as it is when you wake up and drive to the course, being the first one out, walking through a little slice of green heaven, carving a path through the fresh dew, and listening to the chirp of birds. It’s like a cold sip of water on a hot day: cool and crisp and refreshing. You can have a religious awakening, an emotional meltdown, a beer, and a hotdog all before 11 am!
So, what about you? Do you like waking up super early ever? On certain occasions?
Like many other activities, waking up early varies as a function of your life stage: When you're a little kid you want all the shut-eye you can grab, unless Santa or rich uncle Ben is visiting the next day. While your in school, you don't have much choice: That bell rings for you five days a week from late summer until late spring. If you're in college, avoiding that dreaded 7:45 isn't always possible, but you're still young and vigorous enough to handle what's thrown at you. Then you leap into the rat race, and your time is not your own, at least until you accumulate enough vacation time for a real escape. Then comes "maturity" AKA old age. Well, at that point, getting up early is usually a function of your kidney clearance rate and bladder capacity (a word of warning). But sometimes, on the way back to the bedroom, you catch a glimpse of the first beam of sunlight peeping through the shutters. And then you trip on something you left out last night and stumble and grumble back to bed. As always, the message is carpe diem, which is probably the main thing us oldsters can pass on on any topic.
I CAN’T sleep late!! After all those years of getting up at 3 or 4 or 5 am my body will just not stay in bed when I see the little whispers of dawn. I guess I am just a morning person!