For years, I thought I had to be one or the other.
There were the larks, those impressive people who wake up at 4 or 5 AM, exercise before breakfast, journal, meditate, do yoga, drink their coffee while watching the sunrise, and somehow seem to have accomplished half their day before I’ve even properly opened my eyes.
Then there are the owls.
The people who come alive at night. They stay up late, write, create, think, work, watch movies, have conversations at midnight, and seem perfectly happy while the rest of the world is asleep.
I have tried being both.
Neither one really worked for me.
For years, I tried to become a lark.
I set alarms.
I got up very early.
I told myself that this was what disciplined, successful people did.
And for a while, I managed it.
But I never really enjoyed it.
There is something about getting out of bed at 4 or 5 AM when your body is very clearly saying, absolutely not, that makes the whole thing feel less like a healthy routine and more like a personal disagreement.
I also know I’m not an owl.
I can stay up late. I’ve done it plenty of times, and I’m usually perfectly fine the next day.
But staying awake willingly until 1 or 2 AM doesn’t feel natural to me.
I don’t want to be going to bed when the night is almost over.
I like my evenings, but eventually I want my bed.
And then, late last year, I wondered:
What if I’m neither?
Maybe I’m somewhere in between.
And believe it or not, there is also a name for that category of people. I just didn’t know it.
The hummingbirds.
So for a while, I stopped setting an alarm.
I simply let myself wake up when I naturally did.
And I was honestly surprised by what happened.
I started waking up around 6 and 7 AM.
Almost every day.
I usually went to bed around 10 PM, which means my body is quite happy with around eight hours of sleep.
Apparently, my body knew what it was doing all along.
Who knew?
Certainly not me.
I’ve never been a particularly good sleeper, and for the past five years or so, I’ve struggled with sleep even more. Getting older probably isn’t helping either. So I try to wake up at the same time every day, regardless of what time I go to bed or what time I actually fall asleep. For me, that means setting my alarm for 6 AM.
But one thing I’ve noticed is that I feel much better when I stop trying to force myself into a schedule that doesn’t suit me.
Six or seven AM feels good.
Four or five AM does not.
And two AM doesn’t really appeal to me either.
At 7 AM, I am awake.
At 5 AM, I am mostly a very confused human being.
And at 2 AM, I would like to be in bed.
I think that makes me a hummingbird.
Not an early bird.
Not a night owl.
Just somewhere in between.
I like having a quiet morning with coffee. I like having a productive few hours when my brain is actually ready to cooperate. I like evenings too, but I don’t need to stretch them until midnight to prove that I can.
Maybe that’s why the hummingbird feels right.
They’re tiny, energetic, constantly moving, stopping and starting, disappearing, coming back, hovering for a moment before darting off somewhere else.
There is something very familiar about that.
I don’t have perfect routines.
I don’t wake up and conquer the world before breakfast.
I do like exercising in the morning. In fact, it’s probably the only thing I genuinely enjoy doing early. And by early, I definitely do not mean 5 AM.
Some mornings I wake up ready to do things.
Some mornings I need a little time to remember who I am.
Some mornings I accomplish a lot.
Some mornings I accomplish absolutely nothing.
And I am trying to be okay with all of that.
I’ve spent enough years trying to become the person I thought I was supposed to be.
And I am still struggling with it.
But these days, I’m much more interested in trying to figure out who I actually am.
And apparently, I am a hummingbird human being.
A hummingbird who feels fully awake somewhere between 6 and 7 AM.
With a smile,
GOO:DMOO:DISM