It took a while, but sleep deprivation finally caught up on me again. I had kept myself as well-rested as possible during the summer, but summer doesn’t last forever. Before I knew it, the new school year had begun. Getting up at 6:20 a.m. nearly every weekday since, and lucky if I don’t lie awake for hours before, I’m now thoroughly exhausted, making me easily distracted, confused, and prone to crying, not to mention slow to understand and learn. Fantastic.
But there is one bright side to getting up so early in the morning: it makes the day seem vast. I start work as soon as Marshall leaves for school. Consequently I finish my work in the early afternoon, and there’s oodles of time left over for other things. As a lifelong fan of the “wee hours,” at first I could only resent the loss of that time. Now I understand that it has a daylight counterpart which, though not as good for creative pursuits or pondering the deep mysteries of the universe, nevertheless has its uses.