Day 24 / Early Bird Magic

Bidding adieu to my night owl era (hopefully)

Jun 16, 2025

Wake-ups before 6am: 1 (!!!)
Snoozes hit: 0 (is this personal growth?!)
Candles burned: 17 (RIP Diptyque)
Existential epiphanies had by eucalyptus tree: at least 4

Morning people, feel free to skip this one (unless you fancy a ego boost from my pitiful track records of mornings that is).

So confession o’clock. I’m a night owl. Oh how I would love to roll out of bed on my first alarm. Rested, refreshed and ready for the day.

In reality, I love a snooze and no matter what time I go to bed I always wake up feeling clunky and groggy af. I’ve tried sunrise lamps and bird song alarm clocks. Coffee first thing and also no caffeine for 90 minutes. Mornings and I are just not a happy union.

On the flip side, come 21.00 I get a real second wind. I suddenly have the answers I’ve been looking for all day. A creative surge. A need to chat. To do. Energy that comes out of nowhere.

So as much as I have long wished to be part of the early morning squad, I had come to accept that is just not who I am.

Evening

But then I stumbled across something in Wintering that caught my attention. A chapter about how sleep itself has changed.

With electric lights, our evenings have become longer. We no longer sleep when the sun sets. Back in the day, people would simply go to bed whenever it did and wake up with the sunrise.

When the nights were longest in the winter, they would wake up for a bit in the early hours before falling back asleep for their second sleep.

Interesting. I decide to give it a go and so for the past few nights, when the sun went down, everything electrical went off.

No electricity. No screens. No lights. Just me, a handful of candles, and the moon.

And you know what? It’s proven strangely effective.

I thought living by candlelight would be cosy and aesthetic. Indeed it is, but it’s also (crucially) a right pain in the arse for doing most things.

I can just about write and read, pull some tarot cards if I’m feeling reflective, but anything else eg unstacking the dishwasher, suddenly deciding that now is the perfect time to rearrange my wardrobe, is a faff in the semi-darkness.

And with all my night owl distractions eradicated, I’ve suddenly found myself in bed before 10pm each night this week for the first time in, well, ever?!

Morning

As a result, I’d been slowly inching towards my target wake up of 7am (surely I should have already cracked this in the 29 years I’ve spent on planet Earth?!) when suddenly this morning. Boom. It happened.

It’s not even 6am when my eyes ping open. I’m awake! Without an alarm! I am a morning bird!

To be fair, the whopping great ferry that just chugged past probably had something to do with it. But whereas before I would have rolled over and slept, today I am up and out before you can say 6am club.

I open up the shutters and stop. Hold my early bird crown.

The whole sky is a deep searing red cut through with the ebbing gold of the sunrise. A single fishing boat bobs on a glass sea. I can smell early morning dew on the pines and the whole island is resounding with birdsong.

I slip down to the beach. Everything feels still and calm and quiet. A tiny sliver of moon hangs overhead. I meditate by one of the Eucalyptus trees before grabbing a coffee and heading back to the beach.

By the time 8am rolls around, I’ve done morning pages, completed another chapter of The Artist’s Way, read, journaled and swam. Magic. I could get used to this.