Mornings Are When I’m At My Most Productive

And as Much as I Hate to Admit It, I’m A Morning Person

3 min readJul 25, 2022

Six-thirty a.m. is when I usually wake up. It’s either six-thirty or ten a.m. There’s no in-between. And it’s rarely the latter.

I’ve tried sleeping in later, but it just doesn’t work. As soon as the clock reads “6:30,” the voices in my head start nagging me. “Time to get up!” “Lots of things to do today!” “All your friends are already awake and up.”

I suppose if I went looking for a reason for this, I could blame it all on my mother, who even during summer vacation — the one time I had nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no obligations — she’d come into my bedroom at 8 a.m. sharp and wake me up. “Rise and shine! Time to get up!” And get up I did, however grudgingly.

If we were having pancakes that morning, they’d already be cooked and sitting in the oven to keep warm. And given the state of the bacon (on those days we could afford it), I suspected that Mom must have gotten up a 4 o’clock to fry it: It was cold, soggy, burnt in places, and still somehow undercooked.

For some reason, she always let my middle brother John sleep as late as he wanted. Of course, by 8 a.m. my younger brother David was already awake, sitting in front of Saturday morning cartoons, a bowl of cereal in his lap. I didn’t exactly hate him, but my attitude was definitely unfriendly.

And yet, despite the bad memories I still associate with early rising, I’m still awake most mornings at 6 a.m. Here’s my typical day:

6:30: I wake up 2-1/2 hours before the alarm goes off.
6:32: I grope in my nightstand for my morning medications and take them.
6:35: I get dressed, put my iPhone in my pocket, grab my smoking materials, and head downstairs.
6:40: I put the kettle on to boil.
6:42: I decide between tea and coffee.
6:45: I check my BGL (Blood Glucose Level). Depending on the results, I inject the first of four doses of insulin for the day.
6:50: I fix a bowl of oatmeal, cooking it in the microwave.