Why I get up early

By Becky Jo Gesteland

I ponder this question and peruse my blog to see if I have an answer. I find several relevant posts.

November, 2019 Time to myself.

I’ve been writing about my lack of time since July. Not sure why I felt I had so little time then, because I have even less now. Shifting priorities? New medication to combat depression? 

Women writers have always struggled to find time to themselves to write. Right now, I’m writing at 6:23 a.m. when I really wish I was still sleeping. The time change helped me wake up early. That and the cat. So, for the next week or two I’ll take advantage of my messed up sleeping schedule to arise early and write a few words.

But then what? When my body and cat adjust to the new schedule, when NaNoWriMo is over, will I continue? Surely part of the struggle is priorities. Because unlike some women, I have a supportive family who would help protect my writing time if I simply asked. I think part of the dilemma for women is this ingrained sense of “needed-ness.” That is, we need to feel needed. As mothers, wives, bosses, daughters, aunts, colleagues…our relationships with others dominate our lives. So, we drop whatever we’re doing to help someone else. I interrupt my grading to feed the cat; I shorten my writing time to check email; I pause my Netflix show to listen to my daughter; I stop reading to talk to my husband; I walk back from yoga with a colleague rather than enjoying the post-practice peace. Choices sure. Priorities yes. But also, a culturally ingrained sense of needing to be there for others. At someone’s beck and call.

September, 2020 Reflection 

What? After feeding the cats, before anyone else wakes up, I sit at the kitchen counter as daylight begins and the room becomes brighter.

So what? Observing my movements. Noticing my environment. Describing the scene. To what end? So that whoever someday reads this may know my state of mind? Why would they care? I live in a house with two people and two cats. It’s turned fall–September 22–and tomorrow I turn 58. The world still roils with COVID-19. Angry politicos battle for power. I’m tired, sad, listless.

Now what? I’m borrowing words from my syllabus, the questions that guide students to reflect on their community-engaged learning experiences. What? So what? Now what? At least those are the ones I recall. But I can’t answer “now what?” because I’m trapped in this space and time of pandemic. Still living one day at a time.

I can feed the hummingbirds, until they leave for the year. I can water the flowers, while they continue to bloom. I can wash dishes, fold laundry, mend shirts, knit shawls, read books, practice yoga, drink coffee, eat yogurt, type letters on a keyboard and watch them become text on a page and posts on a blog and artifacts of a moment in a day from a life of a woman passing time.

March, 2021 Lack of sleep. 

The precious commodity eludes me today, of all days, the first weekday after the switch to daylight savings time. Wide awake at 5:45, which was actually 4:45 two days ago. No, the cats did not wake me. Perhaps I slept too long on Saturday. Maybe I have too many puzzles racing around in my brain. I did four yesterday: the Spelling Bee, the mini crossword, the Sunday, and a jigsaw puzzle. Or it could be my body’s adjustment to the missed SSRI dose on Friday night. Still finding a balance.

Today I receive my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and I’m a bit anxious–especially after my “mild prolonged response” to the first one. It will be a relief to be protected. By March 22nd. Just a little over a year since we shifted to remote work. The year that time stood still.

August, 2021 Observation. 

To watch the mother and baby deer graze in our front yard, to listen to the silence of the house, to read book reviews and craft advice in Brevity, to lie on the couch with the cat and try not to fall asleep, to solve spelling bee or crossword puzzles, to read and perhaps write, to keep the world at bay for a few hours…before the sun comes all the way over the horizon, before the air conditioner kicks on, before my work emails start to ping, before my family wakes up, before the news of the world rushes in.

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Becky Jo Gesteland lives in Ogden, Utah, where she is a professor of English at Weber State University. Her work has appeared in Gravel, Palaver, Role Reboot, Plateau Journal, So to Speak, Visitant, Weber: The Contemporary West, and various scholarly books and journals. She blogs at https://jomamabecky.org/