I Like My Mornings Again.

I know that for some people getting up before 5 am is the normality and I am also aware that people work all hours of the day, 13 year old me knew this a little too well when the brief idea of becoming a Police Officer was cut short by the idea of having to work Christmas day. But now that I'm working in a role that is shift based early mornings just come with the job, and not the early mornings that I had on a 9-5, you know the early mornings where the start of your day is the rise and getting ready part, but no my early mornings start now at 4:30 am and I'm at work and ready an hour and a half later. Something which if you would have told me a year ago would have one called into question the frequency of trains and other public transport and two would have been something that I thought would have quite possibly been the worst thing in the world. But then as we all know a pandemic hit, I lost what I thought was my dream job quite literally overnight and before I can plant a foot down in this new way of life 8 months have passed and the only contact I got from any form of employment was rejection letters and 'Sorry we're not hiring at the moment' messages. I built up an idea that employment was out the window, channelling my inner dramatic prose I really did think I would never find a job again.

So I chose to try and be productive, I chose to try and focus on something, and well before there comes any information on whether this was successful or not, I want you to focus on the idea of me trying, because this was never set out as something I thought I would be able to upkeep 24/7 because I know myself due to a realisation a couple of years after the devasting Police Officer one that it is and was completely fine to not be productive throughout 100% of my free time trying to so become my second favourite thing to do. (Second only to the sing-along version of Mamma Mia of course.) Because you see in my last full-time role I let every inch of it consume me, I worked over 50 hours a week, I took work home with me and on Sunday nights when I should have been relaxed and wondering why we were having yet another roast dinner I was instead checking train times and setting out goals for how the following day would unfold. I let hobbies that I enjoyed quite literally disappear into the background and every activity such as the gym or an after-work drink became a game of numbers to calculate how tired for the following day I would become, everything I did based itself around making me ready to give everything I had over to this job. Which to an employer might make me sound like the dream candidate, but for me looking back now I just realise that I was missing out on so much. I was missing out on enjoying the mornings.

I use to get up at half 5. I didn't have to get up at half 5 but I have an extensive hair care routine and like to take my mornings slow. So I got up at half 5, and when it was dark in the winter it would feel as cold and miserable as it was coming home of an evening, the busy commute and main character complex wore off pretty soon and I started to hate the mornings. I'd never been a morning hater before and I didn't realise how sad they made me until I started enjoying them again only recently. I wasn't earning enough to enjoy regular morning coffees and being allergic to something meant the excitement over Pret porridge wasn't the same as it might have been for a croissant or almond slice. My mornings became a thing which was now just part of the routine of going to work.

Since being made redundant and not having a commute in my life I got my appreciation for the mornings back. Slowly I mean, I'm not a maniac I still do of course love a lay-in and the snooze button on my alarm, but I've learnt to see how good they can be again. Please don't be confused and think I wake up at 5 am on my days off and run 5k. I went for a run/walk this morning in muddy trainers which hadn't be cleaned from a hike last week, I couldn't find the right headphones so the lead kept getting in my way and I'm rubbish at stretching so tomorrow I'll more than likely feel more tired then I do now. But I can now wake up when it's still dark and appreciate that I'll be home, busy or halfway through an episode of my current TV show all before the sun has even come up, I've found the good in early mornings again, it took me a while to not like them and it's taken me a while to get back into liking them, but back into them, I am now.

Okay so like this morning it was a slow starter, it wasn't a morning filled with CEO inspirational level mantras or yoga, but simply a Berocca and some marmalade on toast, and the first run/walk I've done in about 18 months, but now I'm sat at home ready to carry on doing whatever is on one of my many lists all before 10 am (a previous favourite wake up time of mine.) And I know that this next week of 40 hours will still give me the freedom to write and edit and work on my own things, it will let me, after a nap or two be able to create the things I want to build up and eventually finish.

You see the thing people don't tell you about waking up before 5 am on the mornings that you don't really need to is the day is really quite long and I don't think it's something you can really notice until you do it. I'm yet to fall in love with sunsets and I've noticed that there's a slight difference in the blackness of the night to the morning, it feels more blue than black and it could be the coldest of mornings but I can promise you it won't be as cold as the previous coldest nights.