So I went back and read my first post and it sounds like something I wrote back in school. But guess what? I’m back and I know I want to get better. Obviously I’m exaggerating a little, but it’ll be a while till I’m worthy of Medium – and I’m hoping that’s not too far away from now.
All my adult life, I haven’t really been a morning person. This is funny since I was always up by 6.15 on the weekends and even earlier during summer vacations when I attended cricket coaching. I stopped dreaming of being one when I was 18 and from then on I had no reason to wake up, apart from those few days in a year I travel and crave for sunrise and breakfast. In 2010 I moved to Wales to study and made most of my morning lectures in my first year (even in the harsh winter) and then chose only afternoon modules for the second year. I moved back in 2012 and began freelancing as a photographer. I made just about enough money to travel once a year. So for about 5 years now, I’ve been up earlier than my mother, who wakes up at 6.30am, lesser than 20 times all inclusive of my travels. That’s a lot of time lost and I could have easily been a little productive.
I’ve been trying to wake up early. I’ve failed miserably. I don’t even hit snooze, I dismiss it immediately and I wake up with excruciating guilt. The struggle is real. All of the authors who write about tips and hacks to wake up early in the morning are well past this stage. But I want you to know that it is not easy. I’m getting better by the day and I’ve picked up an instrument, found a teacher over Skype who makes sure we have at least two classes a week. I schedule this in the morning because I love waking up to learning new lessons, even if it’s only for two days. But what about the other 5 or 4, depending on whether I want a day off. Some days I’m up trying to write, some days I’m up to exercise a little but most times, I wake up and spend an hour at least, looking through my email, Facebook and Instagram newsfeeds. And this is the time I want to shift towards all things positive.
I’ll list down things I’ve tried and continue to try but must do consistently.
1. Yoga
2. Meditation
3. Read a quick post on Medium
4. Watch only 1 TED video
5. Go for a walk/run/ride on your bicycle.
Pick one activity and attribute it to one weekday. Again, this is more in-tune with my preferences and lifestyle. But if you have experiments that has worked (or working) for you, please do let me know and I’ll give it a shot.
All of the above mentioned activities are a precursor to my writing habit that I’m trying hard to instil. Whatever I do to wake up, I’m going to make sure I sit down to write something everyday. If you missed my last post, I asked people to react in anyway to this post to let me know that you’re reading this, just as a little booster for me to keep going.
PS: I’ve slacked on this one and I’m doing this shamelessly at 1am but I should be up tomorrow morning, for another one of these.
Akshay Gururaj's Blog 
I actually like to think of myself as a morning person – mostly because, on those days where I just can’t seem to get out of bed by 7am, I feel like an unproductive sloth. This is just me, personally, because I think I enjoy the quiet solitude in the early morning hours – as well as the well-earned second coffee cup around 10am after I’ve already accomplished a litany of things on my perennial, neverending to-do list. Having said that, as a chronic insomniac I do occasionally find myself unable and/or unwilling to get out of bed at a reasonable time – those days I might be up and at’em anytime between 10am and 1pm, usually feeling groggy, sluggish and irritated at myself. But…just remember that everyone is different and the fact that you apparently don’t feel the inclination to get up with the birds is absolutely nothing to feel bashful about. So long as you’re able to accomplish what you set out to do within the time that you’re actually awake, does it really matter what slice of the 24 hour cycle that happens to fall on? 🙂
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Absolutely. It does feel nice to wake up and smell the coffee, on most days at least. I guess I did come off a little bashful in my being a night owl during my university days but I don’t think I have any regrets at all. Thanks for sharing 🙂
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