Over the past week as I was grinding through a slow recovery from my back injury, I stopped using an alarm to wake up early in the morning (really early). In the past, even when I was recovering from my hernia surgeries and my ACL/MCL injury and couldn’t work out, I still woke up early with an alarm everyday so that I wouldn’t have to readjust once I got back to normal.
Other than being incapacitated, I liked sleeping in until I naturally awakened (usually around 3 or 4 am). Most mornings, I rolled back over and went back to sleep until around 5AM. Then I wake up refreshed, get dressed feed and walk the dogs and start my day.
Instead of walking the dogs in the middle of the night between 2-3 AM, we’ve been doing our early morning walk between 5-7AM in the pre-dawn hours. Some days, the sun is rising by the time we get back home. We see early morning commuters, a handful of joggers and dog walkers, and a few school buses. I see far fewer bunnies and deer, although they are still around.
It’s not bad. In fact, it’s kind of nice.
I’ve gotten so much rest over the past week that I am full of energy. I’ve been sleeping (or at least prone) for 12+ hours every day. That will level out now that I have begun working out and extending my dog walking trips. I hope to be back to normal in a week or so (fingers crossed).
One change I’ve made is shifting my schedule to daylight hours and waking without an alarm. It means everything is later. I wake later. I workout later. I swim later. I go to bed later.
I expect that I will run into more traffic and more people during the day.
I’m a bit surprised how abruptly and easily I’ve made this shift.
I’ll miss the solitude and extreme quietness of the early morning hours although I don’t miss waking up tired to an alarm at all.