5:45 AM

What do you do at 5:45 AM?   I’ll tell you my new favorite thing to do – wake up and worry.   For some reason, my body has decided that there are not enough waking hours in the day to worry as much as I am right now, so it has started waking me up at 5:45 AM on the dot every day to worry excessively.

And its irrational worrying too.   Its that time of the day where your body   is still sleeping, and your mind is still half sleeping, so really irrational things seem very plausible and important. I wake up worrying about things like if we bought enough wood for our fence, if I answered my 300th voicemail at work the day before, if my thesis for my masters (which is due in August) is ever going to be completed, how many pants I have outgrown in the 6 hours that I’ve been sleeping.

Usually after I worry for a good hour or so, my body lets me fall back asleep about 15 minutes before I have to get up for work.   Let me tell you what a good mood that puts me in…   And when I wake up, I vaguely remember things that I contemplated at 5:45 AM and they just don’t seem that important.   Not enough wood for the fence?   Then we’ll buy more.   Didn’t catch that last voicemail?   It’ll be there when I get to work.   Not going to finish the thesis?   It’s just about finished now, and I still have months left.   Not going to fit into the pants?   Get used to it.   None of these are life threatening, life altering, life changing issues.   There is absolutely no need for a 5:45 AM anxiety session.

But its a useless argument.   My body just doesn’t believe me.   I’m worried, I’m anxious, I have a lot on my mind, and as punishment for doing this to myself – 5:45 AM, baby.   Take it like a champ.   But its all worth it, I think. And it will be over soon.   At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

…but I don’t think I believe it.