The alarm rang at 5AM this morning. I blinked for a few moments, gathering consciousness, and got up. I’ve been listening to the audiobook version of “5AM Club”, and to poorly sum up what I’ve heard so far, is the importance of getting up early and aligning your morning to set up success for the rest of your day and your life. “Own your morning, elevate your life” is the mantra that is repeated. I may not be catching the finer points, especially when I’m listening to it while in the kitchen, cooking, and then Vi decides to ask me burning questions like — what are we doing tomorrow? Will it be cold? Which Hogwarts house would you want to be in (for the umpteenth time)?
The book is written rather uniquely for a self-help/motivation book, told as a fictional narrative — between an entrepreneur, an artist, their eccentric billionaire mentor and, occasionally, the “spellbinder”, who is the billionaire’s mentor. There are a lot of quotes thrown around, and the portrayal of the burgeoning love story between the uptight entrepreneur and the artist with dreadlocks and “mango-sized man boobs” is laughably cringey at times, but there are undeniable nuggets of wisdom there, even if it has taken me forty-five years to recognize them as such.
I’ve been a night owl for as long as I can remember. Going to bed early has never appealed to me, and I have never made getting eight hours of sleep a priority, so I suspect that I’ve been in a sleep-deprived state for most of my life. It must run in the family. My mother was an ER nurse who worked 12-hr night shifts, and she always took overtime. My grandmother raised 12 kids, so I would bet she didn’t getting any sleep for at least forty years. In the last decade, I equated nighttime with “me-time”, when everyone was tucked in bed, and I could luxuriate in studying the foreign language I was currently obsessing over, binge on dramas (in said foreign language), shop online — whatever, until either I started nodding off or my conscience told me to go to bed. This would often be around 1AM to 3AM, and if it was school day the next morning, I’d have to get up by 6AM. Then I would proceed with the day in a perpetual state of zombie-ness that I have long accepted to be normal.
If I had spent those precious hours working on the Great American novel (or in my case, the Great 3/4 Filipino- 1/4 Chinese- American novel), or writing anything of consequence, then I think it would have been time well spent. But because I was avidly, stubbornly avoiding writing most of the time, I distracted myself with easier targets. Like learning Japanese. After a couple of years of half-assed studying, I signed up for the JLPT exam (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) and devoted a full six months to nothing but cramming audio lessons every moment of the day and poring over notes at night. In the end, I have my JLPT N5 certificate (N5 being the easiest level, probably achievable for anyone with 3 months of learning) and a shelf full of Japanese language books. What I don’t have are any solid plans to go to Japan, any friends to speak Japanese with, and any motivation to continue.
So what the hell was it all for, anyway?
I won’t say it was a total waste, because learning for the sake of learning — how is that anything but awesome? Studying Japanese was a challenge I undertook because I knew it would be difficult, and I got tremendous satisfaction from conquering my perceived limitations, like, thinking I would never get past the first levels of Duolingo. Japanese has TWO alphabets in addition to kanji, which are Chinese characters (a whole ball of wax on their own), all of which can be used in ONE sentence! I probably could’ve become fluent in French by the time I learned how to say and write “Please give me two rice balls and a Coke.” in Japanese. (If you’re curious, that’s おにぎり2個とコーラをください。/onigiri ni-ko to koora wo kudasai.)
While I can rationalize the many late hours spent watching foreign dramas as a means of “studying”, I can’t defend online shopping as having any intrinsic value, although it often felt so important and imperative. I didn’t recognize it for what it was, a drug that provided a rush of adrenaline and dopamine, that would leave me both wired and spent. More socially acceptable than cocaine but just as addictive. At 3AM I would crawl into bed, my mind buzzing with thoughts of features, price comparisons, potential savings, and future buyer’s remorse, so much that I would lie awake for another hour. The drug was potent enough substitute to keep me from missing alcohol. I’m five years sober now, but I am still struggling every day to beat my shopping addiction.
But something triggered a change in me, or something made me want to change. The desire to get up early — and by extension, the complementary desire to go to bed at a reasonable time (gasp!) — seemed to flow naturally from my current decluttering and minimalism obsession. Getting rid of physical clutter is a big component, but evaluating mental and emotional clutter is important, too. If my goal is to strip away the excess and the distractions to reveal what is essential and truly important, then how can I argue for the activities that fritter away precious time for no good purpose? I had quit drinking because I decided to honor my life and set a positive example for my daughter, but there are other ways that I’ve been pacifying and numbing myself that I became obliged to recognize.
It’s only been a few months, but a new normal is shifting into place. I find myself longing to be up before the sun, to wake before anyone else. I step onto the balcony to breathe in crisp, cool air, and enjoy the sight of a La Jolla Boulevard devoid of traffic. I listen for the uneven clickety-clack of crutches and a walking boot hitting the pavement, a sign that the resident “crazy lady” of our condo is pacing the sidewalk at 5:20AM. Besides our mutual affinity for Goodwill — albeit she likes to hoard stuff and pile them on her patio in fire-hazardous fashion — I like that we also have this time in common.
So, to ensure that I can get up regularly, I decided that I would have to make myself go to bed around 10PM. No more late night study sessions, bingeing on dramas or online shopping marathons. Never in a million years would I have thought it would come to that, but then again, I’ve also started doing things that I have previously sworn off. Meditating. Yoga. Running. Walking. Writing.
And perhaps, most importantly, sleeping.