Don't Wake The Sleeping Man
Confessions of a (very) early riser.
Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a healing newsletter for 80s babies by Shani Silver. This newsletter does not publish free content, but if you’d like to read it you can subscribe here. Thank you for enjoying the work of independent writers.
I’m an early riser. This is not a casual statement like one you might exchange with a new friend while re-applying lip gloss in a restaurant bathroom. This shit is serious. My eyes open at 5am without an alarm, that my friend is rising early. The only way I can sleep in is if I fly to a time zone in the future.
My natural proclivity for waking before the sun itself used to carry quite a bit of shame for me. Imagine perpetually being the child at sleepovers who woke up two full hours before the rest of the squad, thus relegated to lying still in a sleeping bag bored to weeps. There was always the option to join the parents of the house for their morning coffee, but that always felt a bit awkward.
The most frustrating part of naturally waking up early wasn’t actually the practical aspects of it, because my god the sunrises I’ve been lucky enough to see, but rather the popular opinion of it. I’ve always been, how do you say it…lame as fuck? Common sentiment is that sleeping in until half the day is wasted is “cool,” while popping out of bed at dawn to greet the day and…you know, accomplish things is the very height of nerdery.
I know it doesn’t seem like much, but this shit stays with you. It becomes part of the fabric of your self-knowledge, and certainly your self-worth. If someone tells you that something natural about you is uncool, weird, or bad, you’re likely to believe it’s true—especially if it’s been happening since you were a kid. Further, you’re likely to move through life with an understanding that there’s something about you that you need to apologize for. You might learn to start apologizing for everything. Sound familiar?