BACK FROM LIMBO

Finally the constant stream of early morning classes and meetings has come to an end and the familiar routine of fall quarter has begun. I’ve survived the rear-end collision of the 4-week “early fall start” class into the beginning of my fall classes, with grading and general clean-up from the first class overlapping with prep for the three classes that I’ll be teaching in the fall. The problems created by colliding courses aren’t completely solved yet, but at least they’re managed.

Wednesday was the first day I haven’t had to wake up to an alarm clock in the dark and commute for an hour or more to get to class or a meeting on time. What a difference an hour or two the morning makes! Instead of 60-90 minutes, it takes me about 15 minutes to get to work. Even though Jasper the cat insists that I get up a soon as it’s light, he wakes me gently, and I’m able to enjoy my morning coffee as I read the news, check my various e-mail accounts, respond to whatever needs an immediate response, and prepare materials for that day’s teaching. I have time to take a long hot shower, put on a little make-up, and actually think about what I want to wear that day instead of groping in the dark so as not to wake Michael up and throwing on a random combination of whatever all-black items first come to hand.

There are times when I complain about my job(s) and my lifestyle, but being forced to keep standard working hours for a month makes me appreciate my usual disorganized schedule more than I could even begin to express. I’m thankful that I’m able to schedule my regular classes at times that are compatible with my natural night-owl tendencies.  I’m thankful that I have amazing people working in my university lab who keep things running and provide a buffer between me and the early-rising bureaucrats.  I’m thankful that I can do the work generated by my businesses on my own terms, on my own schedule. I’m thankful that I have my theatre group to take my mind off it all on a few nights and weekends. I can’t begin to imagine how most of the world works from 8 AM to 5PM every day of the week. In Seattle, it’s even worse because a lot of people start work at 6 or 7AM. I have no idea why, but that’s a fact.

The real paradox is that I work just as many, or more, hours if I start later, and I always accomplish more, but it feels orders of magnitude easier. My hat’s off to those hardy souls who go to work in the early morning every day of their lives.

Last night I dreamed that I’d been running a long, hard race, and was so tired that I flopped face-down on a patch of cool, damp, bright green grass. It felt wonderful to rest. However, I started to worry that people passing by would think I was dead, so I lifted up my head, smiled, and waved at them. That’s what this blog post is – just a heads-up to let you know that I’m still alive and well, just recovering from the trauma of a month of the alarm clock screeching in the dark telling me to get up and go out there to sit in clogged traffic for an hour.

[The painting of people escaping from the mouth of limbo (the black fish-monster) is by Jaume Serra, 13th century. All photos are adapted from Wikimedia.]

EARLY TO RISE

This morning, while browsing through items in one of the obscure online groups I belong to, I happened upon one of those all-too-common articles that misuse statistics to make a point, or just plain misunderstand the data. The article was about the high percentage of American workers who feel overworked, a point with which I cannot disagree. What I did find strange was the author’s assertion that people who work early in the morning feel less overworked than those who work later in the day and that “productivity is very much (sic) in the early morning and decreases as the day passes”. It’s the wagging finger of the old Puritan “early to bed and early to rise” philosophy still bumping around in its chains, haunting the business community.

When I looked at the graphic that purportedly supported this assertion, what I saw was a first-grade textbook drawing of a stylized songbird and owl, downloaded from some stock graphics site, asserting that “early birds” feel less overworked than “night owls”.  Now this I believe, if we are to assume that the terms refer to those who like to wake up early in the morning versus those who like to sleep in, and that both groups have to report to work early in the morning. Surprise, surprise! Having to be at work early in the morning is not good for you if you're not an early riser by nature!

As a “night owl”, I feel extremely stressed if I have to be anywhere before 10:30 AM. I’m fine with working until 10:30 at night, or later. If I had to be at work early on a regular basis, I’m sure that it would lead to feelings of being overworked, even if I put in the same number of hours as I would when starting later, or even if I worked less. A couple of weeks ago I had to be at an 8:00 AM meeting. At this time of day the 20-minute commute from my house to the university stretches to well over an hour even if there is no rain or other perturbation in the traffic flow. This meant that I had to leave my house before 7:00 AM to make it to the meeting on time. To do so, I needed to get up before 6:00 AM in order to have my morning ritual of drinking good coffee, reading my e-mail and skimming through the news, showering, getting dressed, and waking up enough to drive safely. Forget running, or inspecting my orchids, or testing a perfume, or writing, or anything else that I like to do in the morning while slowly waking up.

 

At this time of year in Seattle, it's dark until 8:30 AM, later if there are heavy clouds and rain. There’s something perverse about having to get out of bed before it even starts to get light. There’s something sadistic about making little kids wait for the school bus at some ungodly early hour of the morning, standing in the cold and the dark and the rain, yanked out of bed by a society that doesn’t want them to lie and dream, for fear they should have original ideas, or sit and think, for fear they should question the values of the society in which they live.

There’s a reason why owls are symbolic of wisdom. They keep their own hours and make no apologies for it.

There are times when I complain about the academic life, but that morning, driving in first gear in the pitch dark on clogged streets and a clogged freeway, I was feeling infinitely thankful that I don’t have a job that requires me to report to a workplace early in the morning. I tend to forget that most everyone in Seattle who has a job is on the road between 5 AM and 8AM, scrambling to get there on time. I also forget that those same people are all on the road between 3PM and 6PM, scrambling to get back home so that they can unwind from the stress of their commutes by watching some mindless TV show and going to bed early so they can get up and do it all over again the next day. That morning on the road I vowed never to feel discontented with my job again. I was happy to spend last night grading the last dozen or so term papers and submitting my fall quarter grades online around midnight. That’s how we “night owls” like to work! We would all be healthier and happier if we could set our own work hours rather than being shoved into the “early birds” box and told that we would be happier if we would just conform and climb into the torture device with everyone else.

[Bird-owl stylized graphic handed off like a relay baton from whatever anonymous source it originally came from; bird at sunrise, school bus, traffic jam, and modern statue of Athena with owl all adapted from Wikimedia]