For about 10 years now I haven’t set an alarm unless I had a plane or bus to catch. My belief is that if my body needs to sleep it will and if it doesn’t it won’t. For the most part this has worked out just fine for me. I’m not someone who needs to worry about oversleeping.
Photo: The sun burns the fog off Keuka Lake in February 2016 while I read the web under a blanket.
For the past 7 or 8 years I’ve woken up, without assistance, between 6 and 7 AM. One of the advantages of having a searchable blog archive is that I can track weird things like this. I’ve mentioned waking up in the morning several times in several posts. As an example, in 2009 I did an episode of Random 60 (a video series I did then) where I mentioned that I typically wake up around 6:45. That was 7 years ago. Today, I woke up just after 6. Yesterday, around 5:30. But most days over the last few months have also been between 6 and 7. So I’m still waking up generally around the same time as I did when I was 25.
I like it.
My favorite time of day is morning. The sunrise, birds, fog, calm, cool. When my eyes open in the morning I generally end up rolling out of bed within a few seconds. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve gone back to sleep after waking up. I’m almost always fully awake and alert immediately. Once and awhile (especially in hotel rooms for some reason) I’ll wake up groggy and need a few minutes to acclimate myself.
What do I use my mornings for? Reading (mostly blogs, Twitter). Coffee. Writing here on my blog (I started this post around 6:45a this morning). Editing photos that I might want to share. Coffee. Reading. Writing.
Even on vacation I’m not one to sleep in late into the morning. I realize for some this is exactly what vacation should be for, and I have no issue with those I vacation with sleeping the day away. But when I’m on vacation I love reading on my iPad and having a few cups of coffee while the sun rises over the lake or ocean.