A Sixty-Something’s Guide to Morning Survival
by Dvora Wolff Rabino
[published in the 2020 issue of The Ignatian Literary Magazine]
Mornings are for me what a pail of cold water is for the Wicked Witch and sunlight is for Dracula. I retired from my day job five years ago less to write than to avoid the jarring brrrrring of an alarm clock and the dazzling glare of an ascending sun. And facing the day only got tougher for me after the second Tuesday of November 2016. But now I am an expert on getting through those difficult pre-noon hours. Not with, barf, sunrise salutations, gratitude journals, or the writer’s seemingly obligatory morning pages, but with the following proven, self-tested steps guaranteed to help you, too, become a morning(ish) person.
1. Redefine morning. Previously, I was a master of the snooze button. Now I let my internal alarm clock be my unerring guide to when I have achieved adequate sleep [hereinafter, “Personal Wake-Up Time”]. No matter how late your bedtime, I guarantee that your own Personal Wake-Up Time will be no later than nine AM. Ten, eleven at the latest. Maybe not in your time zone, but three time zones to your west.
2. Reach for iPhone on bedside table and power it on. The blue light is particularly critical after we fall-back our clocks here in the Northeast and are left with twenty-six minutes per day of sunlight. Feel free to stare into that source of luminescence throughout the evening and for most of the night, as I do, while crunching down on a super-food that combines all four food groups[1]. But keep in mind that the wee-hour phosphorescence is no substitute for a long dose of digital sunshine immediately upon opening your still-unfocused eyes at Personal Wake-Up Time[2].
3. Pee. But not right away, no matter how strong the urge. No, wait until you have scanned all your emails and started mentally composing answers. What’s more important: your bladder or your friends? Once your brain and therefore urinary tract are fully awakened, place your right hand, palm-side up, firmly in the pee-stopper position and run those six chilly steps to the bathroom.
4. Take a break. Return to bed and pull blanket up to your neck. To avoid further loss of body heat, be sure that only your eyes and your typing hand remain uncovered. When you are awash in sweat from scalp to toe, throw covers on floor. Then, when your teeth begin chattering again, retrieve the blankets from the floor and struggle to tuck them back in.
5. Correspond. From a prone position, slowly touch-type answers to each of your emails and your new virtual friends’ Facebook and Instagram posts. That junior high school buddy who dumped you and was just nominated for a Pulitzer? Two thumbs up. The op-ed about the imminent end of the world? Three hearts. And by the way, spending an hour—or four—replying to your friends and relatives does not make you a lazy sloth. No: You are engaging in the 21st-century equivalent of a Jane Austen heroine attending to her correspondence in her hoops and petticoats whilst sitting upright at a Victorian lady’s desk with ivory stationery, quill pen and bottle of ink. While listening to an e-book on her iPad.
6. Take a break. To recover from the waves of jealousy, floods of panic and tsunami of dread that inevitably result from the use of social media, engage in a solitary restorative activity. Play a minuet on your harpsichord, then button up your boots and embark on a morning constitutional across the heath. If, perchance, no harpsichord or heath manifests itself at your manorial estate, do as I do: stay in bed and open the game apps on your phone. This morning, for example, I digitally assembled eight new jigsaw puzzles posted since I closed my eyes the night before. Alternating those with rounds of Free Cell, Tetris and Words with Friends will most certainly keep dementia at bay.
7. Read the news. At 11:56 am precisely, scan the dozen online news sources at your fingertips for the latest reports on mass shootings, collapsing democracies, and icebergs melting into the ocean. You may find, among the 99,999 shockingly horrible news blasts, one heartwarming story of a little kid saving her puppy. Or guppie. If you don’t—and you probably won’t—proceed to Step 8.
8. Take a break. You’ve earned a nap and you need it[3]. So resist the urge to re-pee and instead close your eyes and relax yourself by visualizing a babbling brook. Oops, no, not a babbling brook. And not a melting iceberg, either. Maybe a palm tree, gently swaying in the wind. In Vermont, now that it’s 83 degrees there. In the winter.
9. Inspire yourself to face the day. When, at 1:49 pm, you awaken from your fevered nightmare about ICE agents barreling down hordes of refugee penguins, puffins and polar bears while peeing on the U.S. Constitution, distract or motivate yourself with nineteen random things Facebook has decided to show you after spying on you all morning. A pop-up ad for Twyla Tharp’s Keep it Moving that details the seventy-seven-year-old legend’s sunrise workout routine. A news article about eighty-two-year-old Jane Fonda getting herself handcuffed and hauled off to jail every Friday for protesting climate inaction at the Capitol. And the morning practices of the prolific author Haruki Murakami, who at your age wrote for five to six hours daily, beginning at four a.m., then decompressed with a ten-kilometer run. Take in the shame and resolve to take in the lesson. You will not waste another micro-second of this precious day. You will do it. For sure. Now. Any minute now. You will, absolutely, positively and for sure:
10. Shower.
But first, you probably need one more break.
[1] Salt, sugar, chocolate and fat. Eighteen chocolate-covered pretzels make for the ideal midnight snack.
[2] Some folks swear by SAD lamps. My own results with this have been mixed. I first bought the deluxe version recommended by the shrink who is guiding me through my Prozac withdrawal. Turns out this rectangle of dazzling light was the size of our living room picture window. I mailed it back in exchange for the trimmer model. That one was the size of our attic skylight. I placed the virtual skylight on my bed directly in front of me while I used my iPhone. For two and a half hours. I guess I feel less SAD now, but I am blind in one eye.
[3] A NASA study found that even a forty-minute nap improved sleepy astronauts’ and airplane pilots’ performance by 34% and alertness by 100%. Imagine how much more beneficial an eighty or 120-minute nap would have been. Especially if the study subjects had something really complicated and important to do afterwards, like revising one paragraph of my novel.
