The Crushing Weight of Warm Blankets

I overslept this morning. Not much, only an hour past my scheduled wake up. It didn't interfere with my workday, as I work remotely for a company based on the West Coast and even sleeping in means I get started before my colleagues wake up. This situation has expanded my mornings: rather than keeping to my usual night owl ways and pushing into the wee hours of the morning and then sleeping in, I have tended increasingly towards earlier bedtimes and pre-dawn wakeups.

This has changed my morning hours into the space where I focus on myself. At night, I am typically worn out and love to just hang out with my family and binge watch streaming television but in the morning light, there is space and will and attention to turn inward and do some hard work.

It was only an hour, but I have been filling my mornings with these tasks of self-improvement so I would have gotten quite a bit done in that missing 60 minutes. These morning hours are where I work out, walk, meditate, journal, plan my day and focus my attention on the work ahead.

Missing that, and missing it for no reason other than my own laziness, was an annoyance. I started the day off balance and disappointed in myself. I almost refrained from taking my morning walk around the lake but I skipped breakfast instead so that I could keep telling myself the story that I am the type of person who walks 20,000 steps a day no matter what. Of course, that same story has a chapter about being the type of person who rises with purpose at start of day and not the all-too common snooze-button pusher who can't escape the gravity well of his warm bed. Of course, I'm not alone in this weakness. Marcus Aurelius himself (yes, i know. i feel you rolling your eyes, but i don't care if it makes me look like a caricature of a tech bro - stoicism is something i look to in times of stress.) needed to write out a refrain against going back to sleep. If he needed to hype himself up just to roll out from under the covers, how can I get too mad at myself for the same failing?

"At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm? So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?"

Tomorrow's another chance to get it right.