Morning Person in Training.
plus: beautiful kaftans, a very bookish week, my favorite under $200 basics.
I go back and forth between desperately wanting to be a morning person and just… not caring.
I once saw a meme where it said something to the effect of, “I don’t identify as a morning person or a night owl, I identify as sleepy.” That is me; I am that person.
When I first became self-employed, my hours were all over the place. I would find myself working well past midnight, staying up until two or three AM… but then sleeping in and starting my day around ten. This was chaotic. I’d miss morning emails and be answering things into the evening hours. My body didn’t like it, I was out of a routine; it was just generally bad and I didn’t feel good. But in a way it was also a rite of passage: after years in the corporate world (I worked a traditional day job for twelve years before going out on my own) it felt exciting to get up whenever I wanted, take a long lunch if I felt like it, do as I please, etc. etc.
These days I am pretty disciplined. I treat my job like a 9-5; I thrive on steady routine. But I often wonder: “Should I be getting up earlier? Am I a lazy sack of sh*t?”
Why I want to be a morning person:
It’s definitely considered more virtuous and socially acceptable to wake up earlier. Sleeping in can be perceived as lazy.
There’s so many of those pieces out there about how all the CEO’s/millionaires/conventionally successful people get up early. I want to be successful!
I am better at my job when I keep regular hours. I generally like to work from 9 until 6 or 7, with a break for a walk or workout.
When I tell my friends with kids I wake up at eight (oftentimes nine on the weekend), and hear how early they were up, I feel a little bit lazy and get a bit sheepish, embarrassed.
All the best classes at my gym are at 7 or 8am. To make it to one of those I need to be up by 7.
In writing this out, it sure does seem like I have a big fear of being perceived as lazy. This is something I’m working on, a weird hangup. I am a card carrying adult and generally a go-getter… why do I care so much?!
The part of me that doesn’t really care.
Working for yourself has so many hard parts (taxes! health insurance! general life uncertainty). Shouldn’t I get to keep my own hours?
I find my creativity often has a second spike around 8 or 9pm. I actually do a lot of my best writing/have my best ideas at night.
My boyfriend is on the west coast; if I decide to go to bed at ten, it is 7pm for him and he’s often still working. 11pm is really the earliest I can go to bed.
And with that, the jet lag. I’m usually about a LA a week out of the month. Jussst as I get adjusted to west coast time, I fly home. That 7am wakeup starts to feel like 4am.
I am a generally sleepy person. Some people really do need nine hours of sleep; I am one of them.
I’m trying to embrace my inner “soft girl,” as the kids say. Screw productivity culture! Listen to your body?
Right now, I am somewhere between caring and not caring. I am trying to be more gentle with myself. In the past I went to bed around midnight and got up at eight. My newest routine (most of the time) has been getting into bed around ten, reading for an hour (and talk to my bf somewhere in there), lights out by eleven, out of bed at seven. I really like this and find I’m my happiest + physically feeling my best when I stick to it. Reading makes me sleepy and I tend to sleep really well and wake up easily the next day.
I really LOVE that hour between 7-8am, especially when I call it my free, do-as-you-please hour. I am not working; I am not really doing anything! I do my puzzles (Wordle, Connections, Strands), and I sit. I hang with the cats, have my coffee, read, maybe journal… maybe needlepoint… it is the nicest way to start my day.
Anyway, I am trying. Or not trying. Being a morning person sounds pretty great but so does listening to my body and getting the extra hour of rest if I need it. (But how do you listen to your body when your body would be perfectly happy with twelve hours of sleep?!) I am part cat, truly.
Are you a morning person? Night owl? Tell me your routines - especially if you also identify as sleepy.
On The Stripe (my blog!) this week.
Can you even Caftan? A very fun round-up of gorgeous caftans at different prices.
A few delicious cinnamon products that smell (and in one case taste) good enough to eat.
Great basics, under $200. A roundup of favorites. The best denim shorts, my beloved $10 white t-shirt, etc.
This Week in Reading:
I finished The Sicilian Inheritance over the weekend. More or less, I read it in a single Saturday. I really, really enjoyed it. It’s historical fiction and it has substance; but it’s also definitely a thriller. I felt scared at parts! I also felt like I was in Italy (and now desperately want an off-the-beaten-path Italian vacation). And I loved the ending. Highly recommend, especially if you would rather be in Italy right now (me too!).
Next up was The Husbands, by Holly Gramazio. This was fun! Light and cute. A single woman returns from a night out, only to find a man in her house waiting for her. He’s her husband. Her house looks different! She looks at her phone and they have this whole shared history. Then, he goes upstairs to the attic and a new husband comes out. And, repeat. Husband after husband, with a few little twists. It is a little bit time loopy (but in a fresh, creative way) but I found I really enjoyed it.
Then, I read Sally Hepworth’s latest: Darling Girls. This was a twisty thriller about three sisters who grew up in foster care and escaped their deranged foster mother. Then, twenty years later… bones turn up underneath their childhood home. Are the sisters victims, witnesses, suspects… or some combination?
Next up is How to End a Love Story. I feel like everyone I know was recommending it and then I had dinner with
last week and she convinced me to order it on the spot at dinner. I only just started it yesterday so don’t have any real thoughts just yet but I’m excited. She said it has The Idea of You vibes and you know that is extremely high praise!
I work for myself, and I feel all of this so much!! I get all my best ideas at 9pm, and I need 9 hours of sleep. I was so nervous having a kid, but he sleeps until 7:30-8 (and therefore so do I), and I am SO THANKFUL!!! I also recently watched this video on Dr. Chatterjee’s page about regrets, and this doctor shared that he wished he cared less about other people’s validation and this need to be productive/successful from other’s POV’s and spent more time with friends/family and doing what he loved. That resonated so hard! I hate hustle culture so much!
https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/chronotype-definition/
I found this piece helpful. Also, it seemed to not disparage any of the types.