Get Up And Go

Or the last couple of days, I’ve been thinking (again) about the way my body and brain work in the mornings. It’s interesting to me because the way I work just doesn’t appear to be the way most other people do when it comes to this early morning guff.

First of all, I know that my body-clock is deeply screwed. ‘Twas always thus. The main part of it seems to be that I actualy get proper sleep between the hours of 7am and 9am – which is obviously fairly unfeasible with regard to work, for obvious reasons. If I get to sleep between 7 and 9, I’m pretty good for the rest of the day. On the other hand, if I’m woken up in that time, I’m like a bear with a sore head for the rest of the day.

As a result, I tend to get up earlier than 7am. About 5.30, for the most part. In many ways it actually suits me – I get the 7am train to work, I’m in just after 8am, I leave at about 3.45pm, get home for about six, and all’s good. In some ways I would say I’m on autopilot for the first few hours, but that’s not really true. Admittedly when I’m getting up I do use/need some form of routine, so I can do stuff while gradually waking up.

But the thing is, the alarm goes off, and bang, I’m awake and moving. I don’t do this thing of lying in bed, I just get moving. I’ve always been like that to some degree – even at school age I would get up ad go, rather than trying t stay in bed. It’s just the way I’m wired. It shifted up a gear when I was running shops, pubs and hotels, because of having to be able to deal with alarms in the middle of the night, and all that joy.

I’ve never really lost that ability. I’m sat on the train while writing this, going to work. It’s 7am, and a good 80-85% of the other passengers are asleep while I’m writing stuff for D4D™, and also doing other stuff for clients, writing web pages, database migration bits and the like.

I was thinking about this yesterday morning too, while driving to work. I’d woken up at half five, and was on the road by six. Not tired at all – although God knows, I should’ve been- and absolutely fine to drive. Admittedly, I stopped off for a quick break at about eight, just for breakfast, but that was it – no tiredness and no hassle.

I don’t know why I’m wired this way, but given the choice of sleeping an extra hour on the train, or getting work and writing done, I know which I prefer.