A New Weapon in the Fight Against Mornings

I typically have a searing hatred for mornings and I couldn’t figure out why. I assumed there were all these different reasons like: the time I went to bed, how long I actually slept, which sleep cycle I was in when my alarm went off, how active I was the day before, what I had to eat or drink close to bed time or how I felt emotionally. Truth is these probably all play some role in the quality of my sleep and therefore my ability to get out of bed in the morning, but what I discovered was that when I wake up with the sun I wake refreshed. Problem is that the natural light doesn’t come into my room until nearly eight-o’clock, so that means that if I want to wake up naturally and gently; I wake up late and have to rush through everything to get started.

         

So in order to wake up with enough time to get going in the morning, I used a combination of trickery and alarm settings that typically wake me with feelings of confusion and intense rage. Even the sound of the alarms (which shockingly sound like submarine dive warnings or air raid sirens) rips me unceremoniously out of my heavenly slumber to the thoughts that I am in danger and the world is rapidly coming to an end. After I realize that absolutely nothing is wrong, I am flooded with unadulterated hatred at all things displaying the time and then immediately overwhelmed with the desire to go back to sleep.

          

Also, I am a snooze junkie. I am one of those people that sets three alarms in various places around my room so that I must get out of bed to turn them off and snoozes every single one of them, thus delaying my start to the day and forcing myself to relive the horror of being jolted awake seven more times. Then, of course, somehow I manage to go back to sleep after I’ve snoozed and then turned off my alarms for an hour and a half, only to wake up at eight-o’clock when the light finally shines through my windows. It is a vicious cycle and one that I repeated for years. Until now.

I recently discovered and immediately purchased an alarm light that has a couple settings for light and sound and has thusfar (in two days) transformed my mornings from sheer terror and panic to a gentle emergence into the conscious world. There are like four settings for sounds: Birds of the Rainforest, Ocean Waves, Forest Breeze and softly chirping frogs. I have tried birds and waves with much success, but I can’t bring myself to awake to a swamp frog jamboree at six in the morning. My avoidance of the amphibian chorus is due in large part to the fact that in spring all of the frogs native to the region gather right outside my door and ribbit cacophonously for hours on end and I don't want to encourage them. 

The sunrise feature starts fifteen minutes before the alarm is set to go off and gradually increases in brightness (and sound) and does a pretty decent job of mimicking a sunrise and giving you the impression you might be at the beach, in the woods or perhaps in an Amazonian rainforest and not, let’s say, on a farm in NorCal.

http://www.tripletsandus.com/disney/wall-e.htm

The only unnatural thing about my new alarm clock is that it looks suspiciously like EVE from WALL-E. 

Granted my delight with my new purchase could be that it is a new experience and that is why I am getting up with ease, but I am hoping that it will last. Either way, it is certainly better than waking up to the apocalypse nine times every morning.

Sweet Dreams.