I’ve never been a morning person.

The whine of my alarm clock might as well be a bullhorn. I wake up with dark smudges of yesterday’s makeup beneath my eyes, my hair a snarled mass of curls. I’m creaky and slow to start. I drag my feet and lounge beneath the covers as long as possible, cracking open an eye only when the idea of being late for work becomes dangerously close to reality. I’m perpetually tired — rundown, even — and down Diet Coke to get me to lunchtime. At night, my lovely white noise machine (or app on my iPhone when away from home) blissfully allows me to get my seven hours of shut eye.

So why am I so bent on getting up early these days?

Between the sunrise trip to a local lighthouse and the fact that I’m actually waking before my alarm goes off s0me mornings, I feel like a strange caricature of my normal self. Part of it is that I’m getting over a cold, I think; no one seems to be on a normal sleep schedule when they’re sick.

It’s more than that, though. In the never-ending quest to find more hours in our days, I’m finding the early mornings to be . . . refreshing. Getting  out of the house early last week, I stopped for coffee and breakfast at Panera while I read a little more of Aine Greaney’s Dance Lessons (which is lovely, by the way). And I still got to work early — even with my detour. My quiet little moment for me.

Not hitting the snooze button four times, pouring myself into the shower and scrambling into some clothes before flying out the door is strange — and amazing. That’s not to say I don’t still value my beauty sleep (I do); I’m just starting to realize those lunatics who get up early on the weekends to photograph wildlife or run on the beach aren’t lunatics at all.

That scares me a little.

I mean, if I can be a morning person — and that’s still a leap, I’ll admit — maybe many of the indisputable facts I’ve gathered about myself aren’t so indisputable. Maybe I really do like lima beans. Perhaps my rendition of Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby” is on pitch. I could be an excellent pianist, an excellent swimmer, and yellow? Yellow could totally be my color. Complement my olive skintone.

Anything could be possible.

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Are you a morning person —
or more likely to punch a morning person?
At what time of day do you function best?