NIGHT-OWLS AND EARLY-BIRDS

Well I’m being a night-owl again. A while ago, in a roomful of people (I forget which room) we were going round asking each other whether we thought of ourselves as ‘morning’ or ‘evening’ people (I forget which people too, now that I think about it).

I was busy remembering being a child. These terms don’t mean anything at all to little people do they? You get up early, watch cartoons, you go to bed before the news: it’s a great system. So at what point, growing up, do we figure out whether we’re supposed to be night-owls or early-birds?

The circle went round. There was talk of coffee, of grumpiness, of commuting, of early-morning meetings and late night energy crashes - all the things you’d expect from a random group of grown-ups discussing the matter.

“What about you, Matt?” said someone when the time was right. I blinked out of my reverie and instinctively said what I knew to be true based on the general pattern my life has taken so far.

“Well I’m a musician,” I said. “I seem to come alive after 9pm, like it’s wired into my system.”

Certainly, tonight, it’s true, though I am quite tired. I get deeper quicker, think faster, grow more creative when the sun is down. Right now it’s about 11pm and there’s no-one really awake to talk to, so I’m buzzing. And yes, I do need to be up in the morning. And yes, tomorrow is a very busy day. But look at me.

Here’s my sneaky suspicion, based on my childhood thinking: I reckon you can choose. You can decide whether you’re going to push yourself to get up early and be brilliant before the sun, or whether you’re going to be the kind of person who loves the cool night breezes and comes alive with the quiet darkness. It’s preference, not wiring.

Oh definitely it can becomewiring! As I said to the circle, I felt ‘wired’ to being a night-owl, but I think it was wiring I did myself. I mean really. I’m a musician but I’m not exactly playing late night gigs every weekend. I’ve convinced myself somewhere along the line that this is what musicians do.

If I really wanted to, I believe I could reverse it, discipline myself into being a level above Neanderthal in the mornings, and go to sleep at sensible times. There are a lot of things that look like they’re hard-wired but I think might be completely reconfigurable. The truth is that I just don’t really seem to want to do that. So here I am, doing late-night writing.

One thing I can definitely do though, is be better at interactions in the mornings. My default is to remain very quiet until I’ve fully woken up, which is a bit like holding back a dopey bear post-hibernation. I restrain myself from letting loose the roar, and I tell you what, I’m absolutely not letting coffee wake me up either! So silent I remain often. And that seems to work. But I can do better.

And maybe, just maybe I can learn to switch off everything at night. I think a lot of good comes from sleeping well in a darkened room. Ah well. I think a lot of things; that’s mostly my problem in a nutshell.