*G in the A-Z Writing Challenge. “How do I start each day with purpose?” in the 21 Day Writing Journey

What am I grateful for today? That is what ask myself first thing each morning when I wake from a restorative sleep.

Ok, that’s baloney. I do not have restorative sleep, I have disrupted rest. Sometimes I’m awake from 3 or 4am. I have likely spent the rest of the night holding conversations with myself about anything from why the moon is white, to who I really am, to why can I just not sleep! I’ve been in pain or bleeding or having hot sweats. When I wake up most mornings after a fleeting intense deep sleep from around 8 ish I have to put myself back together. My body feels like I’ve had my joints put on backwards overnight. My back and neck tell me I’ve slept on a rock bed despite my supportive memory foam reality.

So the start of the day sometime feels like it’s happened mid-way through because I may already have been awake for hours of it. If that is the case it never feels like a new and exciting dawn. It feels like a geriatric sunset. And I’m the geriatric.

I’ve been working on becoming ‘a morning person’. Not something I could ever lay claim to be. Not even when I had a job based in Swindon and had to get there for 9 ish every day was I a fan of mornings. I never bounce out of bed with a ready stretch and a gallon of gusto. I crawl head first onto the floor and clamour for “5 more minutes”. I remember as a child growing up that we would get called and called with increasing volume, “Are you up?” and it was only upon hearing the stairs pound would I finally drag my sleepy arse out of bed and into my school uniform. No, never a morning person!

You may be wondering what I mean by working on this. Well, what if not being a morning person was a belief. What if I’d adopted the belief that I didn’t like mornings, wasn’t good at mornings at some point in my life, probably during those teenage years and then subconsciously lived by this ever since? What if I’d just perpetuated this over the years, again subconsciously, by finding getting up at 6 to travel to Swindon no fun at all? To be fair who would find travelling to Swindon fun? But that’s not the point. Apologies to my Swindonion friends. What if the insomnia I’d had for a long time due to joint pain, bleeds and chronic fatigue had confirmed to me the same? That I clearly wan’t made for mornings. But I wasn’t made for nights either! Frustratingly I have never been one to stay up late and have moments of creativity or productivity well into the small hours, unless it’s midway through the night. Oh no! I’m a I must go to bed, I’m exhaustipated, person, any time after 8.30pm!

Having been taught the techniques of PSYCH-K® over the last year or so, I knew it could change my subconscious beliefs, reprogramme negative or sabotaging to positive and supportive. Thus, not long ago, I balanced for “I am a morning person”. What difference has it made, you ask? Do I bounce out of bed like the proverbial Duracell bunny? Not quite. I’m still having insomnia, in fact that has ramped up apace, but I am working on clearing whatever is the root cause of that. I do wake up earlier than I used to, say 7.30 instead of 9.30, which is progress. The only trouble is after a night with 5 hours of missing sleep, I then find myself needing more sleep, drifting back to slumber and waking up at the usual tardy time feeling grotty. I must admit this writing challenge probably has amplified things as I’m choosing to stay up later to get prompts written up by the end of the day and then trying to sleep with words still whizzing around my mind. Why is it that my mind becomes its most creative in the depths of the night?!

Things are improving albeit slothly. If I could get consistent restorative sleep I am sure I would find the mornings much lighter and brighter. Ooo, so what I need to do is balance for the belief “I am a deep sleeper”? I did balance for “I sleep soundly” pretty early on and that worked, but only temporarily. Must check out why that might have worn off.

All this somnambulance is distracting from the point of this piece though. The question was, how do I start each day with purpose? Do I wake up and mentally catalogue everything I am grateful for? Not exactly, but I find that starting each day by shouting an internal but universe bound “Hallelujah, I’m alive!!” a pretty purposeful way to begin. I am you see. Alive. The odds were pretty much stacked against that. What with the severe bleeding disorder and the deadly viruses, I personified Russian Roulette. The only question was what would get me first, when would there be a bullet in the chamber?

The fact I am still here is testament to nothing but luck in my opinion. No accurate spins of the chamber. Predetermination you might say but I doubt that, knowing some of the many who we’ve lost. Each morning when I wake up and discover that it is indeed true and I am still here, still alive, still breathing and bleeding, that fills my gratitude quotient and gives me all the purpose I need. I shall not waste a day. I shall seize the carp. Some days I only manage to cling to a fin, others I’ve got the whole damn fish in my hands like a trophy.

I am clothed in joy as soon as my eyelids lift. A knowledge of how privileged I am to be living inspires me to make the most of the day. Despite my limited energy, my bleeding bits and bobs, I have a purpose. To share love, light and humour with anyone I come into contact with. To be me as best I can and to make everyone feel maybe just a little bit better about themselves and about life. Life is beautiful. Let’s celebrate living and be grateful for every day we wake up, despite how badly we may have slept.