Elastica – Connection

I woke up early this morning but still was nearly late for this recurring Monday morning meeting at the office. When we were fully remote I was never late for anything, but I am not a morning person and the physical effort involved in all the things one must do to arrive at the office in time for an early meeting, on a Monday no less, is just never going to be easy.

I live along a popular jogging route and every morning I see people out there super early walking their dogs and getting their exercise in before getting ready for work. That will never be me. I can wake up, I can get out of bed, I can move around the house, slowly. But I need to have my coffee and give my body and mind the time they need to actually function.

The best way to get myself to a more conscious state is to sit down with a cup of coffee and hit my usual word games. This gives my brain enough of a little challenge to get those synapses firing. Start with Wordle, then move on to the Spelling Bee, when I hit a wall there I do Connections. Connections sometimes drives me crazy. But when I get it right in the first four guesses, I hear this Elastica song in my head and I make a sneer just like Justine Frischmann. Somewhere in there I am actually awake enough to get ready for work.

If I have to, really have to, I can get showered, dressed and out the door quickly. But my brain is not really working, it’s all muscle memory. I am definitely not firing on all cylinders. And I still need that time for my brain to catch up with my body, so I can be at the office, or airport, or wherever, but without having had that time in the morning I am not really all there, mentally, until about 10:00 a.m.

Occasionally someone will suggest that I can train myself to be up earlier and get moving faster in the morning. To which I say, why? Why is it seen as better, more virtuous, to be an early bird instead of a night owl? My dad once worked for a company that had a policy of flexible work hours with a common block of time from 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. You could work any 8 hour block you wanted to, so long as you were in the office during that common block. Meetings could only take place during that time frame. To me, this is a great idea and one that I wish would really catch on. You can get up at 5 and go for a run and be in the office at 7, meanwhile I will try to get the Connections in four guesses while sipping my coffee.