The snooze-bar is the worst.
That doesn’t stop me though.
But, for real, it’s terrible.
Literally, every morning, I wake up startled (against my own will, I might add), hit the snooze, doze for two to seven minutes, startle awake once more (abducted again from my happy place), hit the snooze again, yada yada yada…
I do this daily, like it’s actually a good idea.
Why do I do this to myself? It’s like the exact opposite of delayed gratification.
What’s delayed gratification, you ask? *pulls blackboard out of back pocket*
The Encyclopedia Britannica says delayed gratification is “the act of resisting an impulse to take an immediately available reward in the hope of obtaining a more-valued reward in the future.”
In other words, it’s not eating McNuggets now because if you wait you get have filet mignon later.
The snooze-bar is not delayed gratification. It is delayed regretification.
Think about it. You hit the button thinking, “I’ll get a few more minutes of sleep and feel better this way.”
And that has never been true.
Inevitably, you get kidnapped out of dream land, wrestle yourself free from your abductors, and try, try, TRY to get back to the sweet bliss of slumber.
But it’s not the same.
It’s a false sleep. It’s not restful. Sometimes it’s downright stressful!
It’s gonna ring again, any moment now. It’s gonna go off. Any second now…
You lie there, half awake, taking mental bets on when the alarm is gonna blare again.
Sometimes you even try to count down when you think it’s getting close. Seven, six, five, four, three, tw—*BEHH BEHH BEHH* *groan*
Now you’re waking up tired, grumpy, and wrong!
Worse still, you haven’t just been woken up once—you’ve been woken up like half a dozen times.
That’s a good start to the day…
No wonder there’s so few morning people!
But, hitting that snooze-bar really is kind of like a mild insanity, isn’t it?
Instead of waking up now and getting it over with, I think I’ll just lie here in dread for as long as humanly possible.
I’ve heard some people have morning routines.
I don’t.
And no, I’m not bragging.
I would love a routine. (I had a semblance of one in college)
But you see, your life has to be predictable in order to have a routine.
My life tends to be… (How you say…) Not predictable.
I get my teeth brushed, and I shower, and I take care of all the typical necessities, but it doesn’t happen all at the same time every day, and it often doesn’t even happen in the same order.
It just… happens.
Such is the life of an unemployed artist.
It’s kind of like one, long, endless snooze-bar slap.
Sitting, waiting for life to happen to you. Waiting for somebody to actually like what you create. Sitting, waiting, in dread…
Okay, so it’s not quite that bad.
But still, hitting the snooze every morning is a terrible idea.
Just wake up.
You hear that, America?
Get woke.
Just the once…
Instead of several times each morning…
(I don’t know. Just do what you want.)
Beyond the Garden 