Good Mornings, an Intention

Being the father of three small children means that I have very little time for myself. From the hours of 6am to 8pm, my life is either my job or my family. This means that if I desire any time for myself, it has to be outside those hours.

Normally that means I stay up until midnight playing video games (Zelda lately) or watching TV (Star Trek or King of the Hill mostly), but I’ve found that on the vanishingly rare occasion I’m able to get myself up early, it’s a far more enjoyable and productive time for me. The true challenge of course is actually getting out of the dang bed.

This morning, I’ve started the first of what I’m calling “Good Mornings”. The loose plan is to try to get up early every morning on Monday through Saturday (Sunday’s are for sleeping in), and do something I want to do for myself. To start, I’m going to try using 3 mornings for something active, and 3 mornings for something chill/cognitive.

Active mornings will most likely be just going for walks outside. I love being outside in the dewy morning air, and my favorite place to walk is just a couple blocks from our house.

Chill mornings will be more varied, but will likely end up mostly taking place at my computer, at least at the start. I have a number of small computers tasks that have been piling up that I’d like to take care of (clean up my password manager database, prune my RSS feeds, that sort of thing). I’ve also got a couple coding projects that I’d like to dedicate some real time to (Sensorium mostly right now, and I dream of building a music library manager). Occasionally, I’d also like it to be a time for reading, watching TV or a movie, or playing a video game.

And so, this morning is the first of hopefully many Good Mornings. It’s 4:18 AM. I’m going to quickly finish this cup of coffee, and head out the door for a walk around Lake Nokomis. ☕️

I’m not normally the type to post about this publicly, but I’m experimenting with the thought of it providing me some more motivation to stick with it maybe? Usually, it just adds to the shame of not sticking with the habit, which prevents me from doing it. That could happen here, but we’ll see.