Every night when I lay down to sleep I’m usually still pretty wired, my brain tossing over thoughts and ideas and composing blog posts. And then I get up in the morning all bleary-eyed, wishing I drank coffee, and those thoughts are gone. I stare at a blank page. What was I going to write? I swear there were like three or four subjects last night. They were even thoughtful and well-written in my head. I really miss intelligent posts.

I’ve been a night owl my entire life. As children my brother would be up and perky at 6:30am, but yet my mom routinely had to come in and threaten to dump water on me to get me out of bed. (Once I was awake and realized it was time for school I was happy and willing to get moving, but it’s the moving from asleep to aware that is the problem.) I’m a kid who used to sleep in on Christmas morning. Likewise at bedtime my mom was threatening me with all manner of things in order to get me to actually go to bed. And even then she’d walk in and catch me reading 2 hours later.

High school sucked with the early mornings. When I started college I did mostly evening classes, frequently getting home after 10:30 and then doing homework half the night. If I had no choice but to take on a class before noon I was very grouchy about it. I just don’t function well in the mornings and would typically doze off during class.

Everyone would shake their head at me and say, “Wait until you get a job and have to be up early!” or “Wait until you have a kid who gets you up early!” Which is not a sentiment I understand, really – I mean, why change everything to make it harder now in order to prepare for a maybe 5 years down the road? Regardless, I would just shrug. I’ll deal with that later, I told them.

Now I have a child who likes to get up between 7 and 8am – sometimes at 6. (I dislike the 6. Don’t even talk to me about 5.) You would think that I would be tired enough to sleep when she goes to bed, right? Well… no. I am tired in the mornings, so sometimes I’ll take a nap when she does. But in the evening I still perk up and get full of energy until midnight. I had to set a bedtime for myself of midnight or I would stay up later than that, which does not lead to fun mornings.

I’m just a night owl. It still works for me – although, I could do without Kate waking up crying half an hour after I finally fall asleep.