When I moved into my apartment two years ago this week, I was absolutely in love. The layout was much more inviting than my previous place, it was a 9 minute commute to work, it was brand new, and it had plenty of windows to let in lots of natural light.
So I moved in, and a week later I went to Massachusetts for six weeks, and when I came back, it was time for school to start. So I never noticed the horrible flaw of my apartment until last summer: the bedroom window faces due east, with zero shade.
This means that in the summer, when the sun rises at 6 AM, light streams in my bedroom through the blinds, making it very difficult to stay asleep. Not only does the light disturb me, but the intensity of the sun warms my bedroom to an almost unbearable degree. I usually can eke out an additional hour or 90 minutes of sleep, but by 7:45, I’m usually wide awake and generally annoyed. I like sleeping in, not being a slave to alarm clocks.
So I thought I would break into my Japan fund, buy a curtain rod and some black-out drapes.
And then I thought, “I have a textbook to write, piano music to learn, books to read, a book to revise, movies to watch, a garden to tend, friends to hang out with and family to see. Is waking up a little earlier really all that bad?”
So I’m done fighting. I will probably have breakfast in bed most mornings, read a little while still in my PJs and have generally lazy mornings. And I won’t beat myself up for taking mid-afternoon naps.
But to sleep in, I’ll have to just wait and wish for cloudy mornings.
Julie Rowse 