Night/Morning

I'm reverting to my old late-night self. I inherit the tendency to get involved with something - or nothing - and stay up until 2 or 3 am from my mother. How many 50-somethings do you know who pull all-nighters organizing clippings from old newspapers? If I go out, I come home and stay up another two hours, talking to my roommate, reading magazines, blogging or fiddling around on the internet, doodling, listening to music... thinking, mainly, but if you asked me what I'm thinking about, I wouldn't tell you, wouldn't be able to put it in words. If I don't go out, I start some kind of project - tonight it's looking through my bank statements from the past year, trying to come up with some kind of budget - put on some music, and get into a groove where whatever I'm doing is wholly in my hands, and my thoughts are elsewhere, maybe nowhere.

This would all be good, if I did not also like morning. No, not the 5:45 am part of morning, but 8 is okay and I really love 10 am. I like daylight, I like the way morning wakes you up into this quiet energy, I like getting ten things done before noon and having the whole afternoon to goof off and feel good about it. Maybe it's New England in my blood, maybe it's the influence of my dad (up at 7 am with a tall glass of OJ), maybe it's just that sunshine keeps me happy, but sleeping really really late has that same sticky quality as eating a bucketful of warm Jolly Ranchers... wonderful once in a while, but I start to rot if I do it too often.