Monday, September 23, 2013

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I have commented before about being a morning person, about enjoying the quiet before the day gets started.  There is another thing to consider than simply the quiet, or the coolness that is increasingly available at this time of day, in favor of morning activities: I work better in the morning than later.  It is as if I have a cut-off point each day, after which I am markedly less effective than I would prefer to be.  It seems to matter little how much I have slept before, how early or late I went to bed; what matters is when I get going, and the earlier I do, the more I get done.

Perhaps it is an artifact of my having had early-rising parents.  For many years, my mother worked in grocery stores, and she often needed to be at work at four or five in the morning to get done what needed doing for the stores to open at six.  My father was for no short time a service technician for air conditioning companies in the Texas Hill Country, and in the summers (which last long there, whatever the axial tilt may say of the season), he would often work from before dawn to after sundown to get done all of the work there was for him to do.  That their practices influenced me is not to be wondered at, really; it was normal for me to not see Mom in the mornings and Dad ready for work in the dark before dawn, and early normalcy often resurfaces after teenage idiocy ends (not that it ever ends for many or completely ends for any).

My own experiences have reinforced what my parents taught me (in this and many other ways).  In middle school and high school, I would work with my late great uncle on electrical jobs during the summers, and I learned then that it is good to get the most done during the morning hours, before the real heat of the day could happen.  In college, I earned my pay making and delivering pizza, usually working the morning shifts on the weekends.  I was the only driver until four or five in the evening, so mine alone was the money to be had from football game orders on Saturdays and Sundays, and the money was quite good (indeed, I think I could have made more as a full-time driver then than I am at the moment, though there were other costs to be paid for doing that job, and I have better benefits now by far).

In college also, I sat for early classes.  In doing so, not only did I clear my afternoons and evenings for work, but I presented myself as a fixture of the campus, something that my undergraduate professors doubtlessly noticed and which may well have induced them to my cause when I applied for graduate school--where I continued to be one of the early birds.  Then, as now, I exploited the quiet of the morning to get things done.  Then, as now, I got more done because I got started early.  And now, if I am not at work before noon, I might as well not bother; the work will not be as good, and I will not get as much done as I ought to do.

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