Morning Is the Devil: It's in My Genes

I hate mornings. Sure, they're beautiful. Sure, I like the quiet. Sure, it seems as if you should be up early.

But I hate it. I mean, I really, really hate it.

For the past year or so, I have used a light timer as an electric lamp. This is based upon some vague notion that by using light to wake up, I would help stimulate my circadian rhythm to be more of a morning person.

It doesn't help much.

This morning, I dialed my light timer back to 6:20 a.m. -- the earliest time of the semester.

A few minutes before 7 a.m., my wife yelled, "Your light has been on for an hour [exaggeration], are you ever going to get up?"

Ugh.

A few minutes later, I wandered into the kitchen, looked outside, and saw that it was still too dark out to water the grass.

Ugh.

Why in the world do people choose the make the world "happen" while it is still dark? I love the dark ... if I can watch it get that way. The other way around is just not natural.

So while eating my lunch today, I did some Googling. And I found a brilliant article from Slate, titled, "Can a Night Owl Become a Morning Person? A Slate experiment."

Deepa Ranganathan, I do not know who you are, but when it comes to daylight, we are kindred spirits.

And to the twisted sadist who made my kids' elementary school start at 7:45 a.m., I hope Satan makes you stay up until 3 a.m. every day because you're clearly one of those "morning people."