My Morning Ritual

I have NEVER been a morning person. Like EVER. As an employee my mornings were terrifying, and basically consisted of snoozing the life out of my alarm clock (from 7am to 8.15am, I kid you not), only to jump out of bed in complete shock after realizing what time it was. My first words of the day were literally “SHIT!”. Which left me with about 15 minutes to take a shower, get dressed and grab a bite (really just a bite, also no tea because no time for it to cool to drink).

Now for the shocking revelation of what I used to pour down my throat at at breakfast for about 25 years of my life. Here goes, (drumrolllllls): a glass of Minute Maid brick orange juice + a bowl of Frosties (hello sugar-high!), topped with Nesquick (as if it wasn’t sweet enough already) and served with whole milk (cuz’ my mama used to say my bones needed milk, and who doesn’t want healthy bones?). Tadaaa! Glamorous, right? I remember Andy’s face when we were first dating and he looked at me in silent shock as I poured all of that down my throat in about 3 minutes, with my eyes hooked on the kitchen clock, waiting to jump up from the breakfast table as soon as the pointer hit 8.30am. Sidenote: at that time my husband was a professional dancer so ho knew a wee bit more than me about keeping your body in shape and treating it well…

This is to say that my morning routine has (thank God!) drastically changed these past 5 years. Now I know most of you will think: “But you have the time because you work from home. I’d need to get up 30 minutes earlier and I really need the sleep”. OK so it does take me about 45 minutes to one hour to get “ready” in a healthy and balanced way, but I think that’s about the time most people take in general, no?

New routine: my alarm goes off at 7am and (surprise!) I actually manage to get up straight away now! Why? Most probably because I like how my days look like nowadays – which really wasn’t the case in my previous 10-year corporate career… It really is as simple as they say: do something you love and you’ll feel like you’ll never work a day. But here’s a little hint for those of you who do have trouble getting up when the alarm goes off: there are lots of mean and tricky little apps (like “Alarmy”) that make you complete certain “chores” (eg. solve a math problem or get up to take a picture of a predefined pace in your home) for the alarm to stop ringing. Believe me, by that time, your brain and body are so awake you won’t want to get back to bed anyway! Genius, right?! Definitely a neat invention for former zombies/sleep-addicts like me.