Morning person

I've always been a morning person. I'm energetic in the morning. On weekdays, I usually get up at 5:30 to sneak in a workout and pack lunches before the kids get up. On weekend mornings, I'm on a mission to clean up and get the laundry in while baking muffins and playing with the kids. Evenings are the opposite. I feel drained and useless. I know I'd be better off preparing for the next day after I put the kids to bed, but I just cannot do it without feeling like it's a huge, tiring undertaking. Even things I enjoy, like catching up with friends on the phone or practicing with my drawing book, require a major effort and feel a little like chores.

My ideal schedule would be to sleep from 10 to 6. I can easily fall asleep as early as 8 p.m., but wake me up after 2 a.m. and I'm done for the night. If I'm stressing about something, I jolt awake at 4. (In fact, I did most of my bar studying between 3 and 6 a.m.) JW is the opposite. He stays up late and hates to wake up early. If he goes to bed early, he lies there staring at the ceiling for hours. But because of the way both of our jobs work, our work schedules are the opposite of our natural inclinations -- he does the early shift and leaves to pick up the kids, I do drop-off, arrive late, and leave on the later side.

Lying there staring at the ceiling was what I was doing in the wee hours of this morning. K came into our room around 2:30. I was only vaguely awake when I heard him whispering to JW, but after he left I couldn't get back to sleep. Around 4 I was finally starting to drift off when JW's phone lit up with a text. The sudden change in the room's light made my eyes pop open. I had already arranged with JW that we'd swap schedules for the day and I'd go to work early while he dropped off the kids. So I decided to get up and go to work.

I arrived at work around 5. I knocked out all the documents for a venture financing I'd been working on. The week before, I had been so busy during the day with phone calls and meetings that I wasn't able to get to it until night. I spent hours staring at these documents, trying to figure out how everything fit together while struggling to keep my eyes open. This morning it all seemed so simple and quick. I also got to see a beautiful sunrise over Boston Harbor from my window and had a surprisingly delicious omelet from the cafeteria. Usually on Monday mornings I have trouble getting started. After a whole weekend with the kids, capped off by getting them reluctantly dressed and back to the school routine, my impulse when I get to work is usually to breathe a sigh of relief and feel like it's time to relax. But at 5 a.m., I'm certainly not going to hang out and relax in my office. I'm ready to get things done. I should do this every week. (Maybe without the lying in bed for hours first.)