Waking Up is Hard to Do

Hump Day. There’s a heartbreaking symmetry to it that drives us working people fairly insane. You get up in the morning feeling completely down from the high of last weekend and are still full day away from reasonably imagining yourself outside of a goddamn office.

So we try to postpone everything. We try to squeeze five more minutes of sleep into our nights. Minutes that work only as a placebo. We hit the snooze button, which merely interrupts our regenerative sleep, again making us feel that we’re doing something productive to prepare for the day ahead. Some days we don’t shower. In the summer, this probably hurts (our coworkers) more than it helps, but again we get a few more meaningless minutes of sleep.

Science shows that we’re probably better off just setting our alarm for a later time. I argue that the above methods, and many others, help more than we think. Sure, we gain only a few extra minutes in bed, but it affects much more. It throws off our daily routine enough by starting our day a little later. We get a sense of accomplishment in stealing a few minutes away from a workday that demands incredible amounts of energy. We’re forcing Hump Day to adapt to us, not the other way around. We must not let the workday win. We must fight for every spare second of glorious dreamtime. It is our lives and we are in charge.

This morning I hit my snooze button AND I didn’t shower. What do you think of that, Hump Day? Does that blow your midweek mind? You know what, Hump Day? I feel great. Feel like I slept fifteen hours and was awoken by finches chirping on my window sill. It feels like Thursday, Hump Day. Your move.