Nocturnal

I've been told people can train themselves to change from a night person to a morning person and vice versa but I don't believe it. Well, actually, let me rephrase that. I believe you can train yourself to wake up/go to bed earlier (keep a morning-person schedule) or to stay up later/get up later (keep a night-person schedule). But I don't believe someone can actually change their natural inclination of either morning or night person. I've tried living life both ways and I can say with conviction that I will always be a night person.

Throughout my middle school and high school years I used to wake up at 6 a.m. every week day and practice violin (or sometimes, to change things up, piano) for an hour before having a shower, eating breakfast, and doing other pre-school activities. My classmates always joked that I was the person who woke up the earliest in the class even though I lived the closest to the school. (I can see the rear of the school and the back playing field from my bedroom window.) I did that for years and I got into the rhythm of waking up early even if I didn't always go to bed as early as I should have. In my first semester of college my first class started at 10 a.m. and all of a sudden my 6 a.m. practice sessions didn't seem as important any more. After that first semester I stopped taking violin lessons and my practice sessions grew even more rare, soon stopping altogether. I had more homework and studying to do than in high school and soon I was in a go-to-bed-late, get-up-late routine. And would you believe, I got more done that way than I ever had in my get-up-early, go-to-bed-early stage? My brain stumbled through morning classes, started waking up during afternoon classes, and was pretty much ready and raring to do homework and/or study by the time orchestra rehearsal got out and I finished eating supper.

I'm not really sure what my point is in all of this, but I had to write a blog post for today and this seemed like as good a topic as any. Anyway, I've been told by many people many times that I should go to bed early and get up early and I would get just oh so much more stuff done during the day. Every now and then I try that model again and it's all right for a day or two, but more than that and I start feeling like I can't process information as well as usual and I feel more tired than I typically do. Then I revert back to my night owl ways and my life goes back to normal again. Really I'm not sure what's wrong with me.

I wish I could be a morning person, really I do. Since I was a teenager I've had this romantic notion in my head of future-me (a writer) waking up with the sun on an early summer morning refreshed and ready to write. I pour myself a huge glass of orange juice and carry it carefully up several flights of stairs to my office, a spacious and orderly attic (of course, where else COULD a writer have an office?), where I start up my computer as I sip the orange juice and leisurely glance over whatever notes I had written the day before in my writer's notebook.

These days I'm beginning to doubt, more and more, that my romanticized writer idea could ever actually happen. I might be able to wake up super early if there is a need to, but my brain won't really be awake. There's a new picture edging out my relaxed-beautiful-summer-morning one. Future-me is sleeping warm and comfy in a bed curled up beneath a down comforter on a dark winter night. I'm probably having a really weird dream. At an especially startling point of the dream I'm jolted awake. Not quite sure for a minute where I am or what I'm doing, I stare at the ceiling . . . umm, no, I always sleep on my stomach. . . I stare at the digital red numbers of my alarm clock on the bedside table, trying to figure out what's going on. Then it hits me. The amazing idea that will end my writer's block. I throw back the covers and leap from the bed, racing up to my attic office (yeah, it's just got to be in an attic) where I flick on a desk lamp, fling a fuzzy fleece blanket around my shoulders, and start typing furiously. I can't let this idea get away and my fingers clatter over the keyboard in the cramped-but-still-organized semi-lit room as I attempt to record everything I'm thinking before the thought fades from my memory.

I just write better at night. I'm not sure why or how, but it's true. I wonder if there's anything to amend that or anything I can do to practice getting better at day-writing? If there is, I'd definitely give it a try, but I'm not totally convinced it would really work. I could change if I really had to, but deep down inside I'm nocturnal.

Update: I got interested in this subject after posting this and started looking around online for the answer to my question in the above paragraph. I found this article, which is interesting and pretty much backs up everything I wrote above. I also wanted to know the term for the opposite of nocturnal. I found out it is diurnal meaning, "happening by day, coming out during the day, occurring every day." I also found out that animals which come out at twilight are called crepuscular. Now I think I might be a mix of crepuscular and nocturnal.