Welcome back to TueDuesday: A Weekly Series on Self
Improvement (and Self Preservation), where I’ll share some of the
hard-earned tips and tricks that have made their way up my sleeve after well
over a decade of living alone in the city.
TueDuesday goes out to all of you who have
ever bravely moved into your very own apartment, only to encounter a cockroach
the size of a well-fed hamster. Barefoot. In the middle of the
night. To all the ambitious drinkers who ever wanted to score the
bartender’s number (and to the many of us who have failed, only to bravely try
again). To the pasta fiends. To the Facebook lurkers. To the
happy, the hopeful, and the possibly hung-over guys and gals like me,
navigating the city streets – or the country roads – without benefit of a map
or a significant other. Whether you’re chronically single, newly
separated or happily coupled up and just looking for a way to make the
occasional table for one a little more fun, there’s something here for you.
Like what you see? Pass it
along! Strongly disagree? Say so in the comments!
(Respectfully, please; after growing up with the last name Blewett, my ego can
only take so much.) Have an idea for a future TueDuesday post? Send
it over! And keep in touch, via Twitter @LeahKBlewett and Instagram @leahkblewett.
Happy TueDuesday!
TueDuesday, May 12, 2015
"I'm Wide Awake": Make
Yourself Into a Morning Person
It occurred to me recently that I haven’t
talked a lot here about my recent career change. I’m not sure how much any of you really want
to hear about the decade-plus process of removing “-slash-waitress” from my job
description, but I’ve learned a few lessons along the way that relate to more
than suckering strangers into paying you for your words. Today’s TueDuesday, then, is dedicated to one
of the most important adjustments in my day-to-day life: here’s how to become a morning person.
Some of you are already bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed when the sun rises. This
post is not for you, and kindly am-scray,
because you’re making the rest of us feel lazy.
Overachievers. You can come back
next TueDuesday. This post is for the
restaurant warriors, the college seniors, the touring musicians (Hi, Dad!), and the copyeditors. For all of us
who, for one reason or another, have had to forego traditional sleeping habits
and who are now struggling to reform them.
If you’ve ever found yourself on your couch at 3 a.m. watching Planet Earth for the umpteenth time,
unable to sleep even though you know you have to be up in four hours, this post
is for you.
 |
| Those birds of paradise are SO COOL. |
I’ve been mostly successful at rehabbing
my sleeping patterns, mostly,
although my many friends in the hospitality industry have done their level best
to thwart my evolution from nocturnal to normal (you know who you are). Without further ado: here are a few of the
sneaky, self-sabotaging tactics I turned to when it was time to start waking up
with the day-jobbers.
Pick
a song you Capital-H Hate and make it your alarm.
For the price of a one-time download from
the App Store, you, too, can be jolted violently awake by Katy Perry hooting “I’m
wide awake!” (See what I did
there??)
 |
| I will FLY out of bed to make this stop. |
There’s a second critical step to this
trick, though:
Put
your phone somewhere that demands you get all the way out of bed to shut it up.
Tapping the snooze button is a lot less
appealing once you’re already vertical, so move your phone as far from beside
your head as the confines of your domicile (or the cohabitants thereof) will
allow. Best case is putting it in the
bathroom, which gets you critical steps closer to another favorite tactic of
mine:
Get
in the shower, and get your hair wet.
You and I both know that you’re not going
back to bed with wet hair. You’ll feel
clammy, and when you do finally get up, it will have dried into something resembling
a sea plant from the giant kelp forests off California’s coast. If you shave your head, well, lucky you –
this one won’t work. But this will:
Buy
a coffee machine with a timer, and set it for 10 minutes before your alarm.
The sweet, sweet smell of coffee brewing
is God’s little reminder that mornings aren’t entirely hostile, after all.
“But Leah,” you whine, “it’s summertime! I don’t want
hot coffee!” To which I say: put today’s
pot in the fridge, take out the pot you put in there yesterday, and BOOM: iced
coffee. God, I’m good. Still, even this entire sequence doesn’t
always do it, in which case:
Bribe
an early-rising friend to call you and wake you.
And change their name in your phone to “The
Boss” or “David Duchovny” or whatever name will make you most inclined to
answer despite your foggy morning brain.
As for getting to bed the night before,
well, that can be even more of a challenge.
My brain still thinks it’s supposed to be entering tips and logging
sales at 2 a.m., and I stopped waiting tables five months ago. The most important start is to get up early (um, see above), so that
you’re tired at your new bedtime.
Failing that, have a glass of red
wine or chamomile tea. No judgement;
and either one will help lull you back from the insomniac edge. This next one is tricky, but it really does
work: stop staring at lighted screens. Yes, that includes your phone (which should
be in the bathroom with the alarm set by now anyway; are you not listening to a word I’m saying??), your computer, and
your TV. Pick up a book. Open it.
Consider reading it. Finally, make your bed your favorite place to be. Pick out new sheets, or wash your favorite
set and put them on fresh. Choose
pillows that suit your sleeping habits.
Get your partner a Breathe Right (or yourself a set of ear plugs). Splurge on air conditioning on hot summer
nights, and a humidifier in the dead of winter.
Some people are averse to strong smells, but to my mind, sweet-smelling sheet
spray is a necessary luxury. Try to set a bedtime routine and stick to
it. On evenings when I know I have to be
up for work, I have a glass of wine, then wash my face and brush my teeth (and
leave the phone in the bathroom, plugged in and alarm set). Next, I feed the cat so she’s not all up in
my business at 5 a.m. I take the
decorative pillows off my bed and use one to block the bright “on” light on my
computer, arranging the other three at the base of my window to thwart the sun’s
earliest rays as they crest the buildings outside. And then I tuck in and hope like hell I’ll be
able to sleep, because that goddamned alarm is not going to shut itself off in
the morning, and I have had just about enough of Katy Perry, coffee or no
coffee.
