out of my brain on a train, 5:15 – r daltrey

For several weeks now, I’ve been waking up ridiculously early in the morning. At first, the times fluctuated a lot, but recently it seems to have settled down to around 5 or 5.15am.

I’ve learned, not surprisingly, that I ought to go to sleep early as a result. I haven’t yet managed, though, to overcome the mental resistance of going to bed before 10pm. It just doesn’t feel right. But there’s nothing much on television to keep me up, and if there is anything then On Demand internet provision is useful, so it’s purely ingrained thought patterns that I need to master.

At first, I was annoyed at waking so early, and would try to go back to sleep, usually unsuccessfully, but it’s actually useful. These days, I need to eat very slowly, so breakfast takes a long time. Waking early means that I can take my time and still walk to work at an early hour. It also means that I can resume my daily writing task, as advised by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. I haven’t actively missed writing over the last few weeks, but now that I’ve started again, I remember the benefits: calmer, clearer thoughts and freedom for ideas to filter through.

There is still much about the Artist’s Way that I find irritating or unacceptable, but the Morning Pages task has certainly helped me.