Becoming an Early Riser 008

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Short entry to introduce a method I am trying out.

In several of my posts I have mentioned that I am sensitive to light and prefer to wake up when the sun is up.  In a previous post or two back, I mentioned a how a lamp was helping with that.

Well, last night, I decided to not use my phone alarm, which by the way I've moved from the dresser across the room to my nightstand, but more on that in a minute.  I turned off the phone alarm and decided to see if I would wake to the light of the lamp alone.   The lamp is on a timer to come on at 5:30 a.m. and go off around 6:30, because the sun is rising about that time right now.  (It's late spring here in central Texas...just in case you're, you know, in Australia or some place south of the equator where its winter.)

I reasoned that since my consistency with this "becoming an early riser" transformation is kicking in and it feels kind of natural now to wake before dawn, that if I could train my brain to wake to the light of a lamp while I'm on summer vacation, then I would not need a jarring, even a tingling tone feels jarring to me sometimes, alarm to wake me when we go back to work in August.

So, how did it work out?  Did I wake with the lamp light?  Yes.  I woke.  Did I get up?  Not right away.  Not for an hour in fact.  I attribute that to two things, maybe three.

1. It's a new routine
2. I went to bed later than I should have and didn't get a full 8 hours sleep, so I wasn't rested when the light came on at 5:30.
3. The light goes off at 6:30, so I should probably reset it to go off at 7:30.  If the sun hadn't already risen at 6:30, if it had still be dark, I probably would have slept until it came up.

So, it's a good thing I'm starting this now.  Maybe by the end of July I will have established enough of a habit to wake naturally to the light of the lamp at 5:30 a.m. without rolling over and going back to sleep...provided...I go to bed and go to sleep by 10:00 p.m. the night before.   If I don't, then I should probably set a backup alarm on my phone, especially if I have a morning appointment, so I'm not late.

It would be so nice to be able to wake up to light only, no jarring sounds, something I can only do on vacations.  If this works, every day will feel like a vacation. 😉





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