Last week, I got this wonderful idea to create some extra time for my writing. The plan was simple: get up at 6 o’clock every morning and write till 7. I was fully aware this was going to be a challenging endeavour. So here’s how my week turned out.
Monday
The most marvellous thing happened to me: I managed to get up at 6. Still half asleep, I turned on the computer and made some tea. At 6.15 I was fully awake with my computer running and a cup of steaming hot tea next to me. Despite the earliness I wrote two posts and managed to figure out how to incorporate a film into my blog posts. The only thing I nearly forgot was that it was Monday and that I had to go to work. My goal for Tuesday: getting up 15 minutes earlier so that I’m actually typing at six. I set another alarm to remind myself to go to work.
Tuesday
The success of Monday was nowhere to be found today. I went out for dinner yesterday and around 12.30 AM, my dinner decided to play up, much to my discomfort. I was up till 3 AM spending my time admiring the toilet. If I hadn’t felt so awful, I would’ve used that time to do some writing. The prospect however, of getting up at 5.45 to write wasn’t very appealing, so I decided to skip today’s challenge.
Händel’s Messiah
Wednesday
Officially this is my day off, thus plenty of writing time. Today, however, I promised to help out at work till lunch. I went to bed early and set the alarm at 6.00 again. It didn’t turn out as hoped. Despite turning in early the previous night I’m still dead tired and on top of all this, I’m coming down with a cold. Considering my Messiah performance in London – I’ve got less than a month to master it – so I decided to put my health first. I reset my alarm to 7.30 – again, no getting up before six.
Thursday
This day will always be problematic. On Thursdays I’ve got choir practice in Laren till 10 PM. The journey from Laren to The Hague is a 90 minutes by train. Getting all the rest I can get is essential for this day. Thus, again, I didn’t get up at 6. However, I did my fair part of writing on the train – which counts as far as I’m concerned.
Friday
After my choir practice I’m usually back around 11.30 PM. Last night, however, the train was delayed and instead of 11.30 PM I wasn’t home till 12.30. It was freezing – at least it felt like it – so as soon as I was home I made some tea to warm up before going to bed. In the end I fell asleep around 1.30PM. Guess how I felt this morning.
Conclusion
Getting up early is a life style that’s going to be a challenge and not something I can pull off easily. This week’s attempt turned out to be hopelessly unsuccessful. Looking at next week, I’m not sure it’s going to be much of an improvement. Now I have a cold which I’m desperately battling, I don’t want my throat to get sore too. But I do want to make time each day to do some writing. I just have to find a different way to accomplish this.
One way might be participating in this year’s nanowrimo. Although, my personal goal won’t be 1,000 words per day, because it’s just not realistic for me to accomplish that.
Winston Churchill
Cecile
I used to squeeze it in on lunch breaks, subway rides, and 2 hours a night after dinner. It was a hard schedule to keep. I also can’t work out in the AM. Actually just saying AM makes me snarl. 
