Girl Unaffiliated: Tardy for the Party

I am not a morning person. 

I mumble and grunt as soon as my alarm goes off until about half past noon. This sounds like an exaggeration but it's actually true.

This may not be related, but I have been late to my internship every day this week. For a while there I was coming in fifteen, twenty minutes early, but now my night owl-ness seems to have kicked in.

Oddly, the scientific term for a night person is an owl. (In case you care, the scientific term for a morning person is a lark.) They're actually called chronotypes, or a person's natural sleep/energy pattern. Who knew? Me. I did. 

Of course, like everything, the chronotypes exist on a spectrum, and your chronotype can even shift over the course of your lifetime. Actually, there aren't just people who like to get up early and go to bed early and those who like to get up late and go to bed late. Some people even like to get up late and go to bed early or get up early and go to bed late.

The latter sounds like the perfect situation, as long as I wouldn't be exhausted all day. Like, if I could get up early, get a ton of stuff done, then have fun/watch Netflix/sit around doing nothing for much of the night, and not be a zombie the next day, I would do it. 

I'm more likely the one who gets up late and goes to bed early. At sleepovers in elementary school, I was always the first person to fall asleep and the last person to wake up. Because of this, I missed a lot of the inside jokes and shenanigans from the late night, and I woke up to a bunch of ten year old girls poking, prodding, and staring at me from above.

I'm pretty much always tired and I don't know what's wrong with me. Every time I have a doctor's appointment, doesn't matter if it's the ENT, an allergist, my dermatologist, or the freaking gynecologist, I'll tell them to add "fatigue" to my symptoms just in case they notice something odd that causes extreme exhaustion.

Then again, I've always been this way so who knows if what I experience is normal or extreme? 

Anyway, I've been late to work Monday through Wednesday this week. On Monday, I was 5 minutes late. Not too big of a deal, but I had to rush in the morning and run down the slope to catch the E train and it was raining so a lot was happening and it wasn't totally pleasant. So I told myself, Tuesday will be better. 

Tuesday was worse. I was 10 minutes late, not because it was raining (Monday was actually a torrential downpour, just FYI), but because I hit the snooze button about a baker's dozen of times. I know that pressing snooze just makes everything worse, but it's just that when I'm in that half-asleep, half-awake state, the little devil on my shoulder whispers, "It's okay! Go back to sleep!" in my ear.  And by whispers I mean persistently repeats in a normal speaking voice. But I told myself, after noon when I was settled into and accepting of being a living human in the universe with responsibilities again, I promised myself that the next day, Wednesday, would be better.

Do you see a pattern emerging? Wednesday was not better. In fact, it was the worst yet. I was 30 minutes late. Somehow, it was okay at work due to a myriad of perfectly timed, colliding reasons, but I still feel guilty. 

I always feel guilty when I don't do the exact "right" thing, even when it's okay. But that's just me.

(Also, in case you're not a Bravo aficionado, the title of today's post references an original single by a cast member of the Real Housewives of Atlanta- I highly recommend any and all readers take a listen here. If nothing else, it will make you feel better about your achievements/how many times you were late to work this week.)

​Much love,
GU