“At what time of day do you feel the most energetic and productive?“
Oh, dear. People are going to hate me for this. My only excuse is, I was born at 6:30 in the morning, and have never gotten over the impression that 6:30 – or 5:30, or sometimes even 4:30 – is the right and proper time to get things done.
Which is to say, no matter how groggy I am when I get out of bed, by the time I have completed all the necessaria of daybreak, I am up and at ‘em and rarin’ to go! Just ask my poor, long-suffering husband. He is by no means a night owl, but when he gets up, he stumbles out to the kitchen, puts on the kettle, and makes coffee basically on auto-pilot. If I have wakened before him, and am full of whatever I found in my inbox or on Facebook, I will leap up to tell him and be met with “Shhhh” before I have uttered a word, by which I understand that he is not yet ready to face the day.
This can have its problems, however. Back when we were a Normal couple – that is, before he was retired, when he had a place where he had to be by 8:00 a.m. – back then, he would be out the door by 6:30 or 7:00. I would have been awake since 5:00 or so, and, fully breakfasted, would be ready to get into my own workday, putting on laundry and completing the basic housework chores before I set foot out the door. Now that he is retired, I can’t get anything done before 9:00 a.m. – and by that time, my level of productive energy has already begun to decline. By 11:00 a.m., it will be gone completely, and I will be good for nothing but needlework, reading, or fooling around on the computer.
I have schooled myself, over the years, to put some effort into producing a pretty darn good evening meal; but I am secretly greatly in sympathy with the way things are done in Europe (big surprise), where they eat their main meal in the middle of the day. If I had my druthers, I’d get the meal prep done in the morning, eat around noon, and have the dishes out of my hair by 2:00 the latest.
So I have come to accept that I am wired differently from pretty much all of America. As a young woman, before I was married, I was the world’s worst date – I’d be ready to go home by 10:00 p.m., and heaven help you if you found me still awake at 11:00. Then I met a guy whose last name was Lark. There actually are other reasons I married him. But if I had thought about it, I would have seen the handwriting on the wall the moment I heard his name.
Miss Meg, you crack me up! I am, by no means, a morning person. As a matter of fact, I don’t wake up until 10:00 a.m. no matter what is going on. Thus, I can sympathize with your dear husband. I can be a night owl more often than not. I get my best cleaning done at 4:30 a.m. on the ‘nights’ when I cannot sleep. LOL!
I love reading your writings! When are you going to publish a book? I still want to finish that Russian novel you were writing on line but cannot find the website or my password to log into it.
Meg, you sound a lot like me. I prefer to get things done early in the morning, but by the time the men folk leave the house (between 7 and 7:45 a.m.) I’m beginning to flag. I still get frustrated because stores don’t open until 10 a.m. The day is half gone by then! My husband, also, stumbles around in the morning, dropping things. I’m glad to hear there is someone else out there like me!
Boy, Suzanne, so am I – I really felt like the only American out there who was a Morning Person! Athanasia, I find it so funny that we like to clean at the same time of day – only you haven’t been to bed yet! Living proof that the world would be a boring place if we were all the same…