How to fail at being a morning person....

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To call anything I do at any point of the day a “ritual” is a bold statement. Ritual implies ceremony and layers symbolic meaning onto mundane habits, bestowing reverence on something that probably doesn’t deserve it. Not the way I do things, anyway. I like the idea of being a morning person. In some parallel dimension, there’s a version of me who rises before the sun. She takes her coffee out to the porch and watches the sky turn pink. She reads a little, maybe journals a bit, all before the rest of her household stirs. That version of me wakes up refreshed. No gunk in her throat. No sleep crusted in her eyes. No gravitational pull back toward the pillow. I love that woman. I will never be her, but I love her. I’m an owl. Years of closing shifts spent not getting home until 10pm or later have rewired my brain to believe that nighttime is my time. So I’m often up until 1 or 2am, hunched over my laptop, clicking out horror stories into the dark. Then I sleep until 10am. Later, if I’m lucky. My “morning” routine starts closer to lunchtime. I begrudgingly surrender to consciousness, plod to the bathroom (because let’s be honest, that’s where everyone’s morning actually begins) then shuffle to the kitchen to start the coffee. And wait. Because the chemical salvation isn’t instant. That is one of life’s great cruelties. Eventually I make it to my desk, where I do a little work for The Butchered Writers, the horror writer collective I’m part of. I post the daily writing prompt to the group, then update our Pinterest page with whatever new articles we’ve published. Glamour, thy name is morning routine. By the time that’s wrapped up, it’s usually time to leave for my day job, where I’ll spend the next 8 to 11 hours being emotionally battered by the general public, courtesy of a career in retail. Ritual? Sure. Let’s call it that.