U is for Up by Myself

(For your amusement: I wrote this the other day right after I wrote my Q post. I was excited to be ahead of the game for a couple of days. I actually posted this for a couple of hours before I thought ‘Wait a second! I missed R, S & T!’ Apparently, I was not fully awake for the first couple of days of this week. :))

Sometimes I wish I were one of those people who awake peaceful and pleasant early in the morning. Instead, left to my own devices, I’m one of those people who wakes up kind of cranky at the latest possible moment I can let myself away with. I am working on this, tweaking my systems to figure out how I can make mornings more pleasant for myself, but I can’t help wishing it just came naturally to bound out of bed with a smiley enthusiasm

One of the reasons that I wish I were a naturally early riser is that I love being awake by myself in the morning. I am often up late by myself, but that is not the same. It’s being up, in the light, with the day ahead of me, that gives me the feeling I’m seeking. Part of it is that it feels like secret, stolen time and I have always loved unexpected pockets of time*, and another part is that I like knowing that all my people are settled and comfy but I’m not needed by them at the moment.

This is the mug (well, cup) in question, delightful, no?

This is the mug (well, cup) in question, delightful, no?

I was up by myself this past Sunday morning and I sank fully into the experience. I made a giant cup of tea, wrote my morning pages  and did a little pre-work for the week (I had decided that I wanted to do a lot of planning this week so I did some extra work on the weekend to take care of the day-to-day so I could focus on the long-term. This was not the success I had hoped it would be.) and I just enjoyed feeling productive and peaceful and letting the words flow out of my brain.
It’s not that I can’t get that feeling at other times but I too often get caught up in what is coming next, in the anticipation of being interrupted by having to pick someone up or make lunch or whatever, and I can’t get right into what I’m doing in the same way.

But it is really terrific when I can be up early, sitting at my table with the light just so and I can feel at peace with my work and with the world and with myself as I just move at my own pace from thing to thing.**
Of course, the key thing I see from creating this post is that I need to figure out how to find that same feeling at other times of the day. Funny how that need to transfer an idea or a skill set keeps coming up, huh? It’s like I said in one of my earlier posts for this series (quoting Fabeku, of course), how you do one thing is how you do everything. That concept has upsides and downsides, but mostly it gives useful information.
*I used to love to get to my university classes a bit early and read or make some notes before everyone else got there. It didn’t happen often but I liked it when it did. And if someone is late for a meeting with me, I love it because everyone else THINKS I’m in a meeting and they won’t interrupt, but I have a few minutes to do WHATEVER I WANT until the other person gets there. It’s exciting.

**That was one of my biggest struggles when my kids were small, I had to do things in the order that made sense for working around them instead of in the order that made the most sense to me. I felt all jittery and interrupted in my work and that is hard on the brain!

One thought on “U is for Up by Myself

  1. I love to get up early but so does my husband! He gets up and makes coffee for the two of us – so I’m awake but reading in bed while he reads on the couch. I get to work before everyone and I love that quiet puttering time. Yes UP By Myself is great!

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