Morning Quiet
Tuesday - 07.27.21
Today is the first day I wake up as early as I’ve been meaning to for months. I tell myself day after day, week after week, that I’ll wake up earlier – that I’ll take my mornings by the reigns and become one of those people who can sit down contemplatively at their dining room table, leisurely sipping on a cup of coffee, staring out the window and settling into the day.
Instead, every morning, I repeatedly hit the snooze button on my alarm until I can’t put off waking up any longer. Sometimes I go to pee at the time I want to wake up, but instead of staying awake and hopping into the shower, I crawl back into my bed and snuggle into a few more stolen minutes of aimless half-sleep.
It makes me feel insane because I know I’d like myself so much more if I just stayed awake. I’d like myself so much more without the unnecessary rush of the hectic, close-call mornings. I’d like myself so much more if my days weren’t just wake up, go to work, come home, do nothing, and sleep.
Later in the day, while I’m sitting at my laptop in my room, or standing idly by the office coffee machine waiting for another cappuccino, I chastise myself for my lack of willpower, and for falling into the same trap over and over again. But it’s a good trap, and my bed always feels so warm and safe. Lying in it, eyes closed, not quite sleeping but not quite awake, I can stave off the stresses and anxieties of the coming day – and who wouldn’t want that?
But last night I went to bed a little earlier than usual. I didn’t spend so much time watching inane YouTube videos that contribute nothing to my life, or scrolling through endless, irrelevant Instagram stories. Really, I am trying to take control of my evenings too, but that’s a whole other conversation. Suffice it to say that I slept a little earlier, and when I woke up, I felt like I could stay awake (even if I did admittedly hit my snooze button a couple of times – bad habits do die hard).
Now, I’ve made myself a cup of coffee and I’m sipping it out of my favourite Moira teacup while I sit at my messy dining room table and stare out the balcony window at another overcast sky hanging above skyscrapers stretching into the distance. I feel a shift of perspective that I’d hoped would come once I finally lived out this quiet vision. Mornings are an opportunity and not a bane – not something to be dreaded and pushed away. It’s a simple reality that I just haven’t grown into quite yet.
Hopefully, I will start to see writing the same way. I haven’t written in so long because I was stuck in the same old fear of it – of thinking I’m not good enough, or talented enough, and everything will come out clumsy and wrong. I don’t think I’m bad, but I’m definitely not brilliant, and brilliance seems so impossibly far away. But I know that writing, just like everything else worth doing, takes time and practice, and who needs to be brilliant anyway? Maybe it’s enough to just do it for the love of it. Maybe it’s enough to just do it for yourself.
So I will try to wake up earlier, write something short like this – or maybe work on a short story – every morning, and hopefully, eventually, mornings will become something completely different for me. I have a separate vision of myself going to a nearby coffee shop in the mornings before work, observing the waking world around me and typing away on my MacBook at a table for one. But baby steps, baby steps. Let’s see if this lasts.
