I want a girl who gets up early…

During a sunrise run on our honeymoon. I loved getting out before all the other tourists were awake.

I used to love getting up early on the weekends. I barely slept on vacation, no matter how late I had been up the night before. As soon as I was up, I wanted to get out and get the day started.

Somewhere since we moved to Nashville, that changed. I remember my first night here. I had taught my normal, crazy, Chicago teaching schedule right up until the day that I left town. We got up early and my mother-in-law and I drove the entire day, getting to Nashville just before the leasing office closed on the new apartment. We unloaded, had an exhausting dinner, she went to her hotel and I inflated the air mattress in the new place. The next morning, I was up at 5am to get a workout in before biking to the new job at 8am.

Somewhere between then and now, that morning enthusiasm changed. Yes, there was the fire shortly after we moved and that definitely derailed things for a while, but we got back on our feet. I’ve always been able to get up early to get things done or get a workout in, but it’s been a long while since I’ve been excited about it. It vaguely bothered me, in a way that I noticed it, but figured it would either sort itself out in time, or that I was just older and different now.

Since the pandemic began, and for several months before then, to be honest, the only trips we’ve taken, the only people outside of our household we saw at first, were my parents. I remember thinking about it when I chose to sleep in when I was there instead of bouncing out of bed to get my run in before everyone else had awakened. I still sometimes got my run in before everyone else was up, but it was more a hauling myself out of bed than a bouncing out of bed. It disappointed me a little, but I thought that maybe I was just really tired. Maybe I’m just not used to getting up early anymore because of the pandemic. Et cetera.

He did make it difficult to get out of bed.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m not sure exactly when this started happening. I remember laying in bed with Jake on weekend mornings. He was a good snuggler. Understandable during the winter, but in the summer? Normally I’m bouncing out of bed to get the long run in before it gets too hot. Enjoying being wakened by the sunrise at 5am. Maybe it’s just that the winters are longer here. Or maybe I just wanted to spend some time with Jake, knowing that he was getting older. I still managed to wrench myself out of bed when I needed to and get things done. I always enjoyed those times that I did, but apparently not enough to fall back into the joyful habit.

I’ve been through enough highs and lows to have a substantial handle on the fact that some things take time. There’s a time to push and there’s a time to ride the wave, but eventually equilibrium will return. This was different though, at least I thought, as it wasn’t seemingly connected to any event and I couldn’t put my finger on when the change had happened. Couldn’t have been the entire time I’ve been here, could it? Unsure. But I thought it might be permanent.

The past few weeks though, something has started shifting. I’ve found motivation in my writing again, rather than forcing myself to sit down for thirty minutes and then rocketing out of the chair when the timer goes off. Once I sit down, inspiration has started revving up and I end up staying past the time I set for myself. My to-do lists have started extending into the weekend instead of tapering off on Thursday, making me feel like I have a grasp of that time again. As a side effect, I don’t find myself forgetting projects that I want to do or neglecting good habits I’ve been building during the week.

This morning I got up 40 minutes early.

There was nothing exciting about the morning. I had to go to work early. The kittens woke me up when they started wrestling with each other next to me. Well, Cloud woke Aang and I up because he was ready to play. I put him off the bed and tried to sooth Aang back to sleep, but he was up. He yawned, stretched and was ready to go play. I got up to feed them, looked at the clock, realized I could lay back down for a little while longer, then thought “why though?” The sunrise was beautiful.

Don’t get me wrong, I am still incredibly stressed about the state of the world, the state of my finances, the virus and on and on, but I seem to have found the energy to start pushing again. I’m setting goals that challenge me again rather than just making a to do list so that I’ll get things done that need to get done. This is a recent feeling. It’s only been a few weeks, so I don’t want to count my chickens, but I hope that I’m on a mental upswing.

The kittens got involved in one of my workouts this week. It was adorable.

Ever have that feeling like you’re coming out of a funk that you didn’t know you were in? Strangely, peole have been telling me that I’ve had a hard year or so. And while cognitively and objectively, I can look back at the year (or so) and say, “yeah, that’s not great,” honestly, I thought everyone was probably just being overly nice. So many others have it so much worse, right? But maybe it was hard? If so, what’s the catalyst for the turn around?

Was it something as simple as adopting two kittens?

I’m honestly not sure. It seems like there must be more to it than that. Maybe the world slowing down helped me slow down and heal, although it sure didn’t feel like a rest. Perhaps social distancing allowed me to connect with people who were long distance and reconnecting is energizing. But I am pretty sure the kittens were at least a part of it. (Although I still miss Jake. And I always will. There is no comparison.) I’m going to cautiously ride this wave. I’m going to hope I can hang on to this for a while.