Everyone's been there. You've got your pajamas on, maybe a little kettle with decaffeinated tea next to your bed. The TV's glowing with the hues of @Midnight and the soft, gentle caress of Chris Hardwick's voice soothes your eyelids shut. You say to yourself - I'm going to wake up early and I'm gonna get everything I need to do within the next week done. You drift calmly to sleep.
Five hours later, you awaken to the harsh sound of reality. Your alarm goes off. Night-self thought your morning-self would appreciate that your phone is ten feet away, making you actually get up to turn it off. There is absolutely nothing to be appreciated about that. So, you think to yourself - well, maybe just one snooze alarm. After three or four taps of your phone, you're somehow hours late for work, your elderly neighbor has hobbled fifteen miles, and you have accomplished nothing.
This is my morning. Every day.
Despite the various benefits I've heard can come with rising early, I have yet to actually embrace what they call 'the facts.' I just like sleeping too much. Sleeping is healthy, I've been told; however, oversleeping can actually hinder your regular sleeping patterns, thus it can harm rather than service you. Well, shit.
It wasn't until a recent episode of Horace & Pete that I actually experienced an existential crisis involving my oversleeping. The Steve Buscemi character, Pete, who suffers from a severe mental illness, states, "I'm getting deep into the second half, here. I started thinking that in the first part of my life, I slept a lot. Life experienced is life lived. So, if I get up earlier and I sleep less, then I'm making the second half of my life longer than the first."
Sure, his character is significantly older than me, by thirty-one years to be exact, but his words couldn't hold more true to my situation. I waste a lot of time doing, essentially, nothing. Thirty-one years from now, I don't want to be in Pete's position, saying those words. So, to counteract and prevent that from happening, I'm going to attempt to wake up earlier. Starting tomorrow. Or next week.
My hope is that I can adjust my sleep cycle to align with waking up at 6 because, as comedian/podcaster Marc Maron says, "5:30 is bullshit. Is it night? Is it fucking day? What the fuck is 5:30?" I don't want to anger Marc anymore than he already is.
So, as I'm sitting here, typing this when I should be working on my 12-page Shakespeare paper due Monday, sipping the delicious nectar of my Marc Maron coffee mug, I think to myself - where would I be without you? the 'you' being coffee, not Marc Maron.
OK, a little bit of him, too. You get it.
The first time I was exposed to the liquid that fuels my anxious veins was at grandma's when I was about twelve. Now, you may think that twelve is early for a child to get hooked on coffee, but I'll counter that to say that it's just the right time. If it stunts your child's growth, who cares. You parents are always complaining about how your children need to stop growing up, so shove a funnel in their esophagus and pour some cold brew down it. That'll fix it.
Not only is that annoying, the people who subscribe to the "don't talk to me until I've had my coffee" idea certainly deserve nothing less than a swift kick to the nads. They are the bane of my existence. They drink one cup and they're bouncing off the walls like the ball in Pong; slow at first, gradually gets faster and more terrible. What? You don't know Pong?
Unlike most folks my age, I actually prefer unsweetened black coffee over whatever the hell you drink. Yeah, your non-fat frappuccino with extra grass-fed whipped cream and seventy-eight percent cacao sauce may taste OK, but nothing is more badass than a simple cup of black gold.
I'm going to guess you like sugar in your cup, perhaps a little milk, but you don't have the time to prepare that in the morning. So, you stop at Starbucks so your barista can whip that up for you.
That'll be $3.40, please.
Do that five days a week, potentially more, that's $17, $68 a month. An entire container of Maxwell House is less than $10, and that's not even on sale. That container can make at least a vat and a half of coffee. Pure, black gold.
Laziness doesn't pay, but you do.
And I guess that's what I'm trying to get at, here. As I approach the impending end to my college years, I need to start thinking about the future. But do I really? I don't know. I guess we'll just have to see if I graduate first.
For now, I'm going to wake up earlier to see if that can fix my issues, which involve simply starting this pretentious Shakespeare paper.
