More than a month after arriving back in the US, and I’ve seemingly lost the ability to sleep past 5:30 in the morning. I think it’s happened maybe twice in the past few weeks, if that…? Otherwise, there I am, literally waking up with the birds just before sunrise.
Aside from the obvious tiredness issue — oh, man, do I need to go to bed by 10 or 10:30 if I don’t want to feel sluggish as shit the next day; if lights aren’t out by, say, 11, then I’ll be struggling — it’s actually a surprisingly pleasant experience, this particular brand of insomnia: I get to appreciate the stillness and quiet of the morning for at least a little bit every day before the chaos starts, and my reading time has exploded. There’s something particularly nice about lying around with the window open, the daylight approaching and just reading with nothing happening around me.
What’s unusual, and unexpected to me before I remember that I’m me, though, the sense of… guilt, perhaps…? Obligation, maybe. A sense that I get occasionally during these mornings that I should be doing something. Not necessarily something in particular; it’s not as if I’m constantly feeling as if there’s one specific task that requires my attention each and every morning… I simply feel this nagging idea of, maybe this time would be better spent being productive.
It’s an idea I do my best to ignore. So much of my time is spent being productive — for work, for house chores, for whatever reason that I’m needed — that this unexpected downtime feels special purely because I do get to be lazy and selfish. For all I know, that’s the entire reason my subconscious has a secret alarm clock waking me up so early each day.