It’s 6 AM. Birds are chirping, the sun is rising and the alarm is going off. Ordinary people slightly opening their eyes and quickly turning to reach for their phones to turn off the alarm. Next task is to uncover themselves from their bed, sit up, yawn, rub their eyes, maybe generally find gratitude for waking up another day to enjoy their morning and everything else that follows. 

 

That sounds like the perfect wake up session for ordinary people. But not me. I’m no ordinary, no sir! I go to sleep at an unknown hour because I refuse to look at my bedtime hour. As long as the sun is not out, it’s a decent bedtime for me. Ambitiously I set my alarm to 9 AM. Yeah right, I laugh at myself as I gently set the alarm on my phone. Then I proceeded to set five more alarms to 9:10, 9:25, 9:34, 9:47 and 10 AM respectively.

 

There’s no hidden meaning behind the alarm timings other than I need to make sure that I wake up to at least one of them. In my defense, I go to bed with the full intention that I need to, nay - that I will wake up at 9AM… ish. And so I sleep with a good positive intention of believing I am going to wake up early the next day. 

 

Ideally I allow myself to snooze for a few times. It's kind of like meditating on my pillow, or so I convince myself. That's all cookies and cream so far. The real struggle comes after many many many times of hitting the snooze button on six alarms all going off within minutes, if not seconds, of each other.

 

My struggles of waking up occur mentally, physically and emotionally. In that particular order too. Here’s how it happens: 

• First, my mind is fighting off this deep sleep that I’m just waking up from. You know, the one where you feel like you’ve been hit by a bus and you don’t know what year you’re waking up to or from. Yes, that kind of deep sleep.

• Since mentally I’m lost, confused and not prepared to wake up, physically my body just automatically agrees and my hand moves methodically every 8 minutes to slap the snooze button again and again. 2 to 3 hours of snoozing is enough to send anyone mentally and physically into loss and confusion, but hey, that’s the routine. 

• By now my emotions are all mixed up. Am I happy? Am I depressed? I’m not sure what is wrong with me and why I can’t just wake up already. While that’s taking place deep in my psyche, my hand goes for another round of snooze battle.

 

O.K., I start to reason with myself, maybe if I go to heat up some water for my instant coffee I’ll get a little motivation to get out of bed and really start waking up. Excellent rationale, I calmly think to myself, so I snooze all the alarms one more time, and I finally make it out of bed. Fireworks are going off outside my window. Birds are chirping, angels are descending, choir is celebrating, and crowds are clapping. I’m out of bed; mission accomplished.

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I head towards my kitchen, which can’t be more than 12 steps away, but I’m so tired from all that snoozing I’m wobbling from side to side. I get to the kitchen and all I have to do is lightly push down on one button to heat up the water. That's gotta be the least satisfying thing I do in my day. So I do it. 

 

Now that I’ve pushed on one button, what do I do, I wonder to myself. I can wait right here till the water boils and make my coffee. I could jump in the shower and wash off all that snoozing. I could put on some work out clothes and possibly head to the gym. The options are endless, really. So I do what I know best, I wobble right back to bed. Except this time, my intention is not to fall asleep but to relax and wait until the water boils. The alarms are now blaring one after another. I snooze them all one by one, careful enough not to accidentally turn any of them off. And naturally, I fall asleep again.