When You're the Only Early Riser in the House, What Do You Do?

Answer: Get used to it because the situation's not likely to change. It can be very frustrating being an early bird in your family when everybody else in the household firmly believes that weekends, holidays and vacations are designated special for those who enjoy to sleep in.

I'm naturally an early riser and for anybody else who shares my predicament, you know how unnerving this can be at times. Weekends aren't so bad as the early quiet hours (and I mean several hours sometimes) provides a time for peaceful solitude. I am devout in my Christian faith, so this is a good devotional time, a time to peacefully soak in the Word of God, and reflect in prayerful meditation. This is also a good time to do some quiet exercising such as stretching, pushups, and core strengthening routines. I've also taken advantage of these early quiet hours, when everybody else is sawing logs, to read a book uninterruptedly. What often happens is I find myself pulled, almost supernaturally, to my laptop. This can often be a regretful choice as it's easy to get caught up in work stuff, Facebook, sensationalized news stories and videos, and worst of all, celebrity nonsense. I couldn't care less about Prince Harry's latest expos`e...but yet we are somehow drawn...

This time can be a real gift if used productively. For example, I'm taking this opportunity at this time to create a blog post. The trick is always to sneak out of the bed as stealth-like as possible, quickly take care of your hygiene needs, make as much coffee as is required to get you through these hours, quietly clean up any remnants of the previous evening's activities. This can often be a challenging proposition as it often requires some degree of thumping and bumping about, which often leads, at least in my case, to swift and grouchy retribution from a too-early awakening of my sweetly-snoozing spouse (kids generally don't care).

Sleeping in on the weekends, I can abide to some extent. It's the time when we're away from home on vacation that really irks me. And all you can do as an early bird is suffer in silence. I fully understand that vacations are for rest, but geez! I want to rise with the birds, get a light breakfast, plan the day's activities and explore new things. Hotel rooms are particularly tricky as you are confined to a smaller space, those iron curtains drawn taught, lest the tiniest ray of morning sunlight breech the crypt-like sanctity of the space. Once expertly navigating through the foreign territory in the pitch dark, executing a modified version of the hygiene regimen and grabbing the essentials: cell phone, camera, room and car keys, I've had the most wonderful adventures, left to my own devices. Hint: skip the mini-coffee maker and lobby coffee. The quest for a good quality cup of real (preferably Fair Trade) coffee is a great way to begin exploring a new area. It's amazing the wildlife you can view, the interesting people you can meet, and the discoveries that can be realized, given this precious time alone.

Sometimes, my wife and kids will be pondering the notion of breakfast by the time I'm thinking about lunch and a cold locally-crafted pint. All you can do if you're an early bird is accept that this is the way it will be and stop getting frustrated that everybody else doesn't share the same need to wake with the sun. To me sleeping in is like letting the whole world go on without you. I always feel as though I'm missing out on something. And mostly I'm right.

There is, of course, a flip side to this compulsion to greeting the day at it's dawning. When the rest of my family is ready to settle in for a good movie in the evening, I can quickly leave them for a different kind of solitude...as sleep comes on me quickly in these twilight of my years...