the watch, the robot, the fuck-yeah early-early wake up time

thanks, new super-functional watch!

Last Friday I inaugurated a new personal practice, launched a bold new initiative which so far is yielding tremendous results: I started getting up on the weekdays at 4:30 am.  

This is not a huge change -- for years I've gotten up at 5:30 -- so for all you shaking your heads and groaning and feeling a little ill, I tell you that for me, a confirmed life-long cheerful little early bird, it's not a dramatic reduction in bed-time.  And hot damn, it's making me so happy that I'm even wondering if 4 am would be better.  Probably demented, but I'm all giddy with accomplishment, drunk on the quiet of my house in the early-early morning hours.

I've been trying to figure Time out for ages, but most especially since Mr Burns came home to live with us mid-September, trying to figure out how to load everything I want and need to do into each day.  Trying to engineer a schedule into which everything fits with less stress, now that there's dog-walks folded back into the mix, now that writing on a daily basis is the new normal.  And since I realized that I'm a total lazy sack of shit in the evenings, that by 7pm I am done with being in charge of my life and just want to do my equivalent of big fat nothing, starting earlier in the morning seemed like the logical way to go.

And it's completely awesome.

Indirectly, the robot vacuum is to thank for this.  A month or so ago, in her* ongoing campaign against inelegant old school appliances tethered to the wall for power, she unplugged the clock-radio in our room.  Thanks to her, I realized how much I prefer there to be absolutely zero light in my sleeping area.  I'd already placed the clock-radio as far from my eyes as possible, moving it from my side of the bed to across the room.  To see it, I'd have to sit up, or at least do a curl to see over the mountain of covers, and squint.  It's not like the light from that clock was bothering me, but a completely dark room just seemed right to me.  I just like it.  And really, that old clock radio wasn't delivering on most of its promises -- the radio was hard to tune, and we didn't even use it for wake-up purposes.  Instead we relied on Joe's Timex wristwatch, chirping its wake-up at us from very close by. The robot had it right.

That's how, after years of resistance to wearing a watch -- I find it difficult to commit to the look of the thing, I rely on my phone -- I got all excited about getting my own.  It didn't seem fair, really, to place all of the responsibility for wake-up onto Joe's wrist (even though I'd done so for years). So I got my own.  I have my own alarms set now: weekdays, weekends, special occasions, yay!  It's not the most beautiful watch on the planet, but it has so many features.  Hell, I might even start running since it can time things.

Which leads me back to getting up at 4:30.  Yes, it's completely awesome.  This is my third morning of this new experiment, and let me just say that it's the best idea I've had in a while.  I get to capitalize on the fact that Mr Burns is a slug-a-bed who will only get up when he hears the kibble hit the bowl, so I can control how long I have to just sit here, read and write, before the bundle of energy takes over the house.  I don't have to choose between what I want to do and interacting with the creatures I live with since they're asleep.  I don't have to choose. The best.

Strangely, it almost seems too short an interval of solitude.  And so 4:00 am beckons, whispering about even more time.  But for now I'm just going to keep checking out the 4:30 am, enjoying that little beep-beep-beep on my wrist under the covers, the way it pulls me gently from sleep and into robe and slippers and office and the quiet of my own mind. 

My new fuck-yeah early-early wake-up time is enough for now.  I know I can always set a new alarm if it gets to that point.  Thanks to the robot, I've got the power.  Thanks to the watch, I've got the time. 






* Please note that the gender of the robot was established by the men in my house, solely for the purpose of mocking me in my love for said-robot.  Fuck them.  She rules.