By Chloe Futrell, Staff Writer
The early bird is not always the happiest. Over the past week I took on the personal challenge of waking up at 5 a.m. every morning. This challenge was inspired by Refinery29’s “Try Living with Lucie” series. Right off of the bat I am going to confess that this did not happen every single day. In fact, this entire challenge was a fail. When I first got started with this I was really trying to look at it with a positive mindset. But in the back of my head, I was constantly dreading waking up at 5 a.m.
The first day I woke up at 6 instead of waking up at 5. I think this is because my body was just not used to waking up so early. The main goal of this whole thing was to find extra time in the day to do things I usually don’t have time for throughout my day. So, on day one this wasn’t really accomplished. If anything it made me more sluggish throughout the day. I laid in bed and scrolled through social media for about an hour. I could have used that time to get ready, but instead I was focused on mindlessly scrolling through Instagram.
Day two was an actual fail. While I did wake up at 5 I ended up falling asleep at 5:30, then proceeded to wake up late for school at 7:30 a.m. That day I was a mess and came to the conclusion that waking up early was most definitely not for me.
The rest of the week was very similar to day two’s confused daze. In fact I was more tired than usual those days. I wasn’t put together, and I was more irritated. Everything and everyone seemed to be a bit more annoying than usual. I know many people who wake up at 5 in the morning each day, and though it is not their favorite thing, they do not seem to have the same struggles as I do.
Maybe I needed to plan out what I wanted to do in the extra hours of the morning so I had something to look forward, to but there weren’t many things I could think of. The sun isn’t even up yet at 5 a.m. in the middle of the winter. So, even if I wanted to go on a walk or jog, I couldn’t do so till 6:30.
I have come to realize that I am not a morning person whatsoever. I would much rather get that extra hour and a half of “beauty” sleep. During this challenge I also discovered that the only way to wake myself up (besides coffee or tea) is to scroll through all of the social media can think of. I could probably revisit this challenge in the future, maybe in the spring or summer. It would probably be successful if I planned what I wanted to do with all the extra time I would have. But right now, maybe I’m not the early bird who gets the worm and just the bird who’s getting more sleep.
Sophomore Chloe Futrell can be reached at futrellch1114@daretolearn.org.
