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Mornings Suck

A short diatribe on why mornings should be banned.

By Jackson FordPublished 2 years ago 4 min read
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Mornings Suck
Photo by Arthur Savary on Unsplash

Here's what my morning should look like, as a writer:

I wake up at 6:30 after seven to eight hours of restful sleep, starting the day with a cuddle on the bed with my wife and dog. Over coffee, my wife and I discuss news stories we've read, and what we plan to do that evening.

While she takes the hound for a walk, I prep a breakfast smoothie consisting of healthy choices like blueberries, bananas, spinach, flax seeds, peanut butter, turmeric and oat milk.

After a short series of stretches, I settle down at the computer for three to four hours of uninterrupted writing. I never expect it to go completely smoothly, because that's not how writing works, but after two hours or so I'm feeling that I am well on my way.

I make tea for myself and my wife, then return to the work. I finish shortly before midday, going well over my word count target. I make lunch and watch YouTube videos with a clear conscience, knowing that I fully lived up to my potential on this particular day. There will be more work in the afternoon—another thousand words, admin, promo work—but I’m feeling good.

Now here's what my morning is actually like:

Our dog ate poop on his walk—again—and vomited it back up during the night, so I begin the day on my hands and knees, trying not to vomit myself as I clean it away. At least he didn't eat any of the vomit this time.

I'm a little bleary—I don't drink to excess and never have, but Nicole and I shared a whiskey before bed last night, which was delicious but terrible idea. I have just enough energy to make coffee, absolutely no energy for any sort of small talk. All I can do is stare at my phone and haplessly doomscroll. Doing Wordle is utterly beyond me. I can just about read emails, but it is going to be along time before I can respond to any of them

We are out of peanut butter and bananas, and I don't think I've even seen turmeric in weeks, so I end up improvising and throwing things like raspberry yoghurt into my smoothie. Is it healthy? Who gives a fuck?

My body feels like it's made of half-baked papier mache, so I have no choice but to do a lot more stretching than normal. That means I'm only at my desk a little after nine…except now the dog wants a cuddle on the couch, and who am I to refuse that smushy face? Then I decide it's very important I check Reddit, which means it's 9:30 before I'm actively doing any writing. Well, I say writing, but it's more like long periods of staring at the screen, interspersed with episodes of stomping around and swearing loudly.

At about 10:30, after perhaps 200 words, I give up and make tea. My wife works a job which requires lots of phone meetings, so I try to bring her her tea very quietly. Inevitably, I trip over something, and end up sloshing it everywhere. Usually at the very important part of the call where she’s trying to convince a client to sign up for something expensive.

Back at my desk, with the dog finally asleep, I do manage to get some words down. Are they good words? Bad ones? Will they last of the end of the day, let alone to the end of the draft? Who knows! At this point, simply having words appear on the screen is a gigantic victory.

Interruptions keep coming. I get not one but two robocalls telling me I'm going to be arrested because I haven't paid taxes. A delivery person needs a package signed for. I'm on the building council, and it's my turn to let the plumber in to look at a pipe in a place I've never even been to. A squirrel jumps out of a tree five kilometres away, and my dog rapidly wakes up from his nap in a gigantic barking fit, and has to be let out so he can thunder around the garden for ten minutes until he is absolutely certain that there has been no incursion.

By the time midday rolls around, I have, somewhat amazingly, reached my target word count. I sit for a few moments, slumped in my chair, breathing heavily through my nostrils. I have no idea what I'm going to have for lunch. Despite much planning and list making, I somehow failed to purchase any of the ingredients necessary to make it. I am exhausted, frustrated, and wishing fervently that I was doing anything else.

And you know what?

I actually don't.

No matter how crappy the morning is, no matter how chaotic, I still get to sit down and make things up. I genuinely can't imagine doing anything else.

Thanks for letting me do what I do.

This article comes directly from my weekly newsletter, Sh*t Just Got Interesting. Want to read stories like it a week before anyone else? Sign up here. And you get a free audiobook too, which is nice.

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About the Creator

Jackson Ford

Author (he/him). I write The Frost Files. Sometimes Rob Boffard. Always unfuckwittable. Major potty mouth. A SH*TLOAD OF CRAZY POWERS out now!

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