Early to Rise

One of the biggest changes serving in the military made with me was getting up early in the morning.  I have always been a self-described “night owl”.  I hated to going to bed at night and would commonly stay up well after mid-night.  Prior to the military, this meant I usually wouldn’t get up until 10am, at the earliest, unless I had to.  Needless to say the military did not agree with my civilian biorhythms.  It probably helped a great deal that the first exposure to my new military lifestyle involved non-optional early morning wake ups by drill sergeants.  These drill sergeants always seemed really pissed off that we were still in bed, even though it was 4am, probably because they had to get up even earlier.  Throughout my military career I rarely slept later than 5am, usually in order to get up for physical training.  When I retired I looked forward to sleeping in more but alas I have been permanently altered.  I find I cannot sleep later than 7am, I always wake up thinking I’m late for something.  I still stay up later at night than my wife would like but she understands.  Nowadays I get up at 4:30 every day so I can get out for a run prior to leaving for work.  As I was running this morning I reflected that it didn’t even bother me – now that’s kind of scary.