“Early to bed, early to rise,”… yada, yada, yada.

How many times have you heard this adage, or have had someone tell you that you should wake up earlier in the morning in order to be more productive? People describe getting up early as this glorious, almost spiritual experience where the world conspires with them to get as much done as possible. I’ve heard people say that early risers are more motivated, more productive, healthier, and even more intelligent.

Thus began my struggles to become a morning person. I wasn’t an early-to-rise person. I worked in the food service industry for years as a waiter, where I didn’t get off work until close to midnight. This was my schedule during most of my 20s. Even during my college years, I made a point of only taking afternoon and evening classes so I could sleep in. Heck, there was even a short stint where I worked third shift, which I didn’t enjoy at all.

Then I entered the corporate world, and they expected me to be at work by 8:00 or 8:30 every weekday, which to me was a nightmare. Good gods! But I did it and convinced myself that I would finally be a morning person.

Have you ever heard of people saying they wake up at 6:00 am every day, without an alarm, refreshed and ready to face their day? Yeah, that was so not me. That was never me. Every morning, getting out of bed was a battle. I’d lie there until the last possible moment, hitting the snooze button over and over—basically torturing myself each and every day. This routine never relented. As long as I worked first shift, the mornings were a battleground with me trying to get out of bed.

When I started working for myself, I figured I could wake up whenever I wanted to. But unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Instead, I soon discovered that people began calling promptly at 9:00 to place orders or get their questions answered. So the struggle continued.

What I noticed over the years is that if I don’t set my alarm, I don’t get up early. Rather than automatically waking up at my usual time, my body shifts to a second shift schedule, no matter what time I go to bed. So if I don’t set an alarm, I’ll wake up at ten or eleven o’clock in the morning. Then when it’s time to return to awaking early, the struggle returns worse than before.

These days, I choose to get up at 7:00, though it’s still a struggle. But I’m doing better. I have three alarms that go off every four minutes. Thus, the irritation factor eventually outweighs my desire to snooze, and grumbly, I get out of bed shortly after 7:00. I arise at the same time, even on the weekends, because if I don’t, then my schedule is destroyed, and it will be that much more of a struggle come Monday.

I no longer have to be up early to answer customer calls, but I still choose to be at my desk a little after 7:00 am. Though I don’t enjoy waking up in the mornings, I do enjoy the beauty, quiet, and solitude of the mornings, and I do believe that I accomplish more during the day when I wake up early. Additionally, being an amateur photographer, the best time for photoshoots is right around sunrise, so there is that motivation for me as well. But every now and then, I briefly consider shifting back to more of a second shift schedule, which is more in tune with my body’s natural rhythm. It would be nice to wake up during the day without the endless and agonizing morning battle with the snooze alarm. Perhaps during my dotage, I’ll finally get to enjoy sleeping in.

I’ve heard people say time and again that anyone can be a morning person and that people who sleep in are lazy. I wholeheartedly disagree. For decades, I have been trying to “become” a morning person, and even though I still get up early (though there are many who don’t consider 7:00 early), it’s never gotten easy. I genuinely believe that some people simply are not morning people, and it’s something you can’t ever force. The struggle is real, folks. Believe me.

I was chatting with an acquaintance recently, and they were talking about how they’d always want to learn to paint and that they regret never taking it up. “Why not start now?” I asked.

“Oh no,” they replied. “It’s too late for that now. I’m getting too old.”

That made me think of a quote from Karen Lamb, who said, “A year from now you will wish you had started today.”

This simple quote has gotten me off my butt and learning new things more times than I can count. A year ago in March, I started learning the piano. When I first considered the possibility, my initial thought was, “I wish I had learned when I was younger.” But then, that simple quote reminded me that if I had started last year, I would have had a year of piano practice under my belt.

Then I thought, “If I start now, next year this time, I will have a year of practice experience. So I started taking lessons. And lo and behold, a year later, I can play over a dozen intermediate-level songs. Four years from now, I’ll have five years of piano playing experience. That’s much better than saying five years from now, “I wish I had started this five years ago.”

Not only that, playing the piano is something I’m passionate about, and I couldn’t imagine not having it in my life.

So I’ve applied this quote to anything I ‘wish I would have learned sooner.’ They say there’s no time like the present, and there is more than a nugget of truth to that. I’ve recently been studying Spanish and am progressing nicely. I’m hoping that in a few years from now, I’ll be able to hold up my end of a conversation with a native speaker.

It’s really never too late to start something you want to learn or that you’re passionate about. A guy in a piano message forum I belong to said that he started learning piano in 2019 when he was 85. He’s now 88, has three years of piano playing experience, and is now uploading videos of him playing — and he’s quite good! His goal is to perform at a concert when he’s 95. At this rate, he’ll pull it off before then.

So yeah, why not start today? Next year this time, you might be saying, “Damn. I’m so glad I started this a year ago. Look how good I am now!”

Today I wanted to share a book with all of you that I came across a few weeks ago that I simply had to pick up. It’s called, “100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet” by Pamela Paul. This is a nostalgic look at all of the things that have disappeared from our lives — some good, some bad — because of the Internet.

What’s funny is that I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot lately, before the book ever came to my attention. We’re considering downsizing and moving to a condo which means we have to get rid of a lot of the crap we’ve accumulated over the years. Given that I grew up in the pre-Internet days, I’ve come across a lot of stuff that is no longer relevant such as a cordless telephone, a cassette player, a walkman, a paper address book, and empty photo albums. How about an old fax machine? I also stumbled across boxes of blank printer paper that I no longer use. It’s been years since I’ve used my printer except for printing out my Profit and Loss Statement each April for my accountant. Additionally, there’s a drawer full of binder clips, clipboards, paper clips, a paper cutter, and even a box stuffed with empty three-rings binders. It tickled me to see many of these same items mentioned in Pamela’s book.

Overall, if you’re a person of a certain age, you might enjoy this little excursion down memory lane to a time of kitchen telephones, Rolodexes, Filofaxes, handwritten letters, checkbooks, and the TV Guide. Oh, and how can we forget the blind date?

I thought this book was so much fun, and I believe young people will also get a kick out of this fun, light-hearted jaunt down memory lane — though a lot on this list has disappeared only recently. 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet is a jarring reminder about how quickly things change and lose their relevance.

While I think there are some things whose loss I regret — such as glossy, paper magazines — there are others that I’m glad are gone (like getting lost, for instance! I love my GPS).

How about you? What things do you miss that the Internet has taken away?

I’ve mentioned a few times in various posts that I don’t watch a lot of television. In fact, I find myself watching less and less of it each year. Oh, there have been a few series that I’ve enjoyed and looked forward to, like The Wheel of Time series and Ted Lasso. But what’s funny is that I have to almost force myself to watch TV these days. It’s as though my brain is fighting me on it for some reason.

And I think I finally figured out why.

A little over a year ago, I watched season 1 of a new Netflix series entitled “Julie and the Phantoms.” I loved this series so much and thought it was tremendous fun. So the other day, I was searching online to see when the next season was coming out, only to disappointingly discover that it was canceled. That’s when it hit me — this was the reason I’m pulling away from TV series. It’s not that I’m bitter that networks cancel shows (though I am). It’s that my brain is full of unfinished stories.

I thought about all of my favorite shows that have been canceled and how all of these unfinished stories are still rattling around in my brain, waiting for their denouement.

I’ve mentioned a time or two that I’m a completionist, so being unable to finish a story — to not have it nicely wrap up — really bugs me. As a result, I’ve been extremely hesitant to start any new series — especially on Netflix, which is notorious for canceling shows after only a season or two. Instead, I’ve noticed that I much prefer to sit down with a good book where I know that if I soldier on, the story will conclude.

Same goes for movies — they (most of the time) tend to have a conclusion, leading to a feeling of satisfaction at the end. This is why I have more of a tendency to watch a film than get involved in a series. I’m guaranteed the movie will properly conclude. I’m not guaranteed that with a television series.

This revelation amused me, and I didn’t realize just how much those unfinished stories irritated me. It seems like such a waste of time to watch and invest myself in only part of a story — a story that abruptly ends without a conclusion. I guess that’s why it’s rare that I DNF (do not finish) books. Even if it’s a crappy story, I still like to see how it all turns out.

I recalled the other day when I went through my Netflix queue and deleted a bunch of shows I hadn’t started and no longer had any desire to watch. Now I know why.

So does this mean I will never watch another series? Not really. If a series is over and was concluded by the network, I might check it out. Or if there’s a series that I’m already involved in, such as Wheel of Time, then I have no choice but to continue on with it.

But as for any new shows — unless it is something that I really, really, really want to watch — the answer is probably no.

Especially if your name is Netflix.

Happy New Year to everyone!

For many of us — as we cautiously tip-toe into 2022 — this is the time for a clean slate and new beginnings. So we create resolutions lists, goal lists and swear to ourselves that this year will be different from the last.

I used to make a list of resolutions every year, and most years, I would fail miserably at attaining them. Arg! Sometimes I wouldn’t make it past the first two weeks of the year before my goals fell by the wayside.

Last year, however, I did something a little bit different. I met all my goals.

I realized the problem was that I didn’t add any action steps to help me reach my objectives, nor did I hold myself accountable. So last year, I created a spreadsheet with each of my goals along with all of the actions I needed to take to achieve them. But not only that, I also set myself reminders in my to-do app (I use Todoist) to periodically check my goal progress to 1) ensure I was on track 2) to see what the next action steps were. I found that setting myself reminders was vital in me achieving what I set out to accomplish. As it turned out, this was the missing element for me.

Of course, everyone is different, and we all need to do what works for us. I just figured I’d share this tidbit of what worked for me because it just might be the missing element for you as well.

As for my goals, I am keeping them simple this year. I’m mainly going to focus on novel writing and piano practice. By the way, this was another ingredient to successfully achieving my goals: make them attainable and realistic. I remember those days when I used to have 30, 40, or 50 items on my New Year’s Resolutions list and would be so overwhelmed that I quickly gave up. Now I include only a few of the most important — and most attainable ones.

Here’s wishing everyone a healthy and happy new year — and may you attain all your goals!