7:00

I’ve been trying this thing where I get up an hour earlier each morning. Typically, I start work at nine and, as it’s only a fifteen minute walk, I can roll out of bed at eight and still make it to work on time. (Some of you hate me for this—and you’re right to.) Well one morning last week, Gunther got me up early. He typically goes batshit at about four in the morning, and then I get up, chase him into the spare room, lock him up, and go back to sleep. But this one day, he was gracious enough not to perform his pay-attention to me freak-out until around seven. I though well shit, no point in going back to bed, so I sat down in front of the computer and worked for an hour. And it was great! I’m not especially sociable first thing in the morning, but my productivity is phenomenal. So I thought I'd try to make a habit of it.

I’ve failed a few times, on the grey days, or the days I’m up late frigging around on the computer, but by and large it’s been a pretty big success. My main roadblock is that I don’t want to surrender that hour at night. Hence the many failures. From time to time I convince myself that I could probably start sleeping less to no ill effect. “You know, I’m losing all this time to sleep. I’m just gonna cut that short by about three hours or so…” which usually lasts about four days before I start getting the DTs. I would love to get up at six o'clock each morning and just have two hours to pour into… whatever—going for a run, writing, reading. But frankly, I just don’t want to be one of those people that goes to bed at nine-thirty. I don’t want to surrender my rock and roll lifestyle.