Night Owl vs Early Riser

Site Default - 9 Aug 16

Forget early rising, I’ve always been a night owl (and a huge fan of lie-ins).

After dark is when my brain starts buzzing with ideas. It’s when I feel most inspired. It’s when I get things done. It’s when I scroll through my to-do list and start ticking things off.

On a week night when I’m not going out, my evening routine tends to go something like this:

• Get my two boys to bed and hope that they won’t come back downstairs shouting ‘I’m hungry!’, ‘There’s a monster in my bed!’, or worse ‘I’ve weed all over the bathroom floor, come quick!’;
• Pour myself a glass of something strong, cook supper and eat it at lightning speed;
• Make a supersized cup of tea and devour a few squares of my favourite dark chocolate (okay, it’s more like half a bar);
• Settle down in front of my computer…

Being a mother to two boys, all-by-myself time is like gold dust. And sitting at my desk – after a long day spent school-holiday entertaining – is when I get to finally be on my own. It’s when I can go ahead and do what I’ve been wanting to do most of the day: follow the latest Twitter feeds, scour news websites, read magazines, write blogs and focus on my freelance work. I don’t have to sit on the floor for ages trying to piece together a Lego City train (there are seven packets to get through – seven!) or break up an ‘I had it first’ fight or make endless snacks for famished little mites or scrub up mini muddy footprints.

By the time I’ve sat at my desk it’s nearing 9pm and by 10pm I am thoroughly immersed in whatever I’m doing. This is around the time when my husband will inevitably say, ‘Are you coming up?’ and I always reply ‘Yes – won’t be long’. At this point in the evening he has done all his work emails, has totally switched off and is keen to get some shut-eye as he is one of those annoyingly-alert-at-6am early risers. I, on the other hand, have only just switched on.

Needless to say ‘I won’t be long’ means that I won’t be in bed until midnight, sometimes 1pm. And although I try not to wake my partner when I go up – I get ready in the downstairs cloakroom and tiptoe haphazardly through the dark – you can guarantee that he will let out a loud huff as soon as I sneak under the covers. He does this every time and I feel a pang of guilt, especially when he’s got something important going on at work the next day. I also feel bad that all the household chores are permanently on the backburner because I spend all my spare evening time on my computer.

My husband despairs of my late-night habits and rightly blames me for being exhausted most mornings. For getting that unbearable fuzzy head that feels like you’ve just stepped off a long-haul flight from hell (albeit without the pleasure of waking up somewhere exotic). He even – gently – suggested that I get up earlier and go to bed at 10pm, so that we can both catch up on some much-needed kip.

So can I switch from shattered night owl to bright-eyed early riser? I’ll have a go… But the fact that I’m writing this gone 10.30pm – and my husband’s fast asleep – is not the best of starts.

Site Default

Fiona Pennell lives in the Cotswolds with her husband and their two boys, Jack, 6, and Otto, 4. A former YOU magazine sub-editor, Fiona now spends her days being trampled on, going on slug hunts and dreaming of lie-ins. (Twitter: @fiona_pennell)

View profile for posts, events and more info