To anyone who has ever slept within a 3-room radius of me, the following sentence is the understatement of the year:
I’m not really a morning person.
Let’s be honest, sleep is my best friend. Once I’m out, anything is possible in the realm of weird sleep habits. I tend to sleep so heavily that I carry on entire dream-related conversations with myself, have the type of dreams you’d expect of someone on acid, and sometimes unconsciously resort to violent tendencies. I wish I could say that was a joke, but I once literally kicked a girl off of our shared hotel bed on a church trip in high school.
I’ve woken up after countless sleepovers to find friends hovering over me and laughing, having watched me for who knows how long as I ruin my reputation as a poised, graceful, unflawed person—because everybody thinks that of me when they first meet me.
So it’s just my luck that I would be offered an awesome job—we’re talking good pay, great benefits; a real solid career-type job—with just one catch: the shift begins at 4:45am. I weighed the pros and cons for a whole 30 seconds before accepting, because there’s no way I could justify passing up this job. And so began my brand new, shiny 8pm bedtime.
I’m a week and a half in and so far, so good. It turns out that when you stick to a good sleep regimen and don’t take mid-day naps unless absolutely necessary, the alarm clock is actually on your side. I’ve gone from setting four alarms in 3-minute increments to just one, cleverly placed across my bedroom so I have no choice but to get up and shut it off.
It hasn’t been without its downfalls, of course. I now have the bedtime of an 80-year-old grandma, which severely cuts down on my booming mid-week social life (NOTE: this is a lie) and there are no Starbucks nearby that are open on my early morning drive to work, so I have to resort to the slightly stale generic coffee from the cafe in my office building.
But you know what? I couldn’t be happier with this crazy early morning shift. Sure, I drive to work before the sun is out, but I also finish my shift while most workers are only a few hours into their days. I have time to run errands or just relax at home. I get to go to the gym before the crazy after-work rush. I even get paid shift differential, totaling up to the equivalent of about 3/4 of a tank of gas each paycheck—not too shabby.
So I guess this is my new ‘grown-up’ lifestyle. Excuse me while I go sip champagne and eat caviar, because that’s what adults do.
