From Morning Girl to Rooster

Early bird or night owl? I've always considered myself somewhere towards the early-bird side of the middle. Six hours of sleep is plenty for me. If I sleep past 9am (which tbh doesn't happen unless I'm sick or extremely jetlagged), I feel like I've wasted the whole day. Which brings me to why I've been so MIA and in some ways lazy this past month... 

It's not that I don't love you, it's just that I've got things to do.

With my new job has come a whole new schedule. I have to be at work by 8:30am which means that my alarm goes off at 5am, aka the tail end of the night. Why so early? Simple, I need to workout in the morning. Yes, I can workout in the evening, but it is really hard for me to get through the day if I haven't started things off with a shot of endorphins (plus sometimes things come up and it makes getting to class super stressful/impossible). Exercise has always been the thing that gets me going in the morning, it starts my day on the right foot. There's something empowering about busting your behind while the rest of the world is still asleep; there's an energy in watching the city wake up as I walk home. By 7am I've already accomplished something and if nothing else about my day goes right, I have that to ground me. (Plus I've usually had a lot of fun, laughed, and listed to some really good music.)

Obviously I bedazzled my shoes and yes, the sparkles make me smile every day. 

As an 8:30/9:30am-class time girl, with a decent amount of 7ams thrown in, I was a always part of the morning crew and assumed that switching to being a rooster/dawn patrol-er at 6am wouldn't be too much of an adjustment. Oh how wrong I was. That 5-6am hour is huge, and my bedtime has not made the switch easy. At first no matter what I did, my body wouldn't go to sleep earlier. Then, even though my eyes would be closing, I found myself fighting it. 11pm, 10:30pm, these weren't my bedtimes. Finally, I gave in and realized that I'm on a new schedule now and there's nothing wrong with that. I don't know why I was resisting except because it was habit. It's funny how we get stuck in routines and then feel like we have to keep to them even when there's no reason to. I'm now at a place where I see the clock strike 10pm and mentally and physically start registering that bedtime is drawing near. Many mornings are still a struggle and there have been some late-cancelations (sorry bank account), but the way I feel at 7am is worth it every time.   

Are you an early bird or a night owl? Have you switched up your internal clock? Any tips?