"Morning" Pages

For the non-morning person

Appropriate mug for the week we open 15 buildings for the academic year.

I haven’t been doing a lot of writing (or creative things in general) this week, due to the hectic work schedule leading up to Mean Green Move-In. I’ve still been reading to wind down at night and keeping up with all my favorite blogs with my morning coffee. In fact, you should check out An Anxious Introvert’s Adventures in Living, wherein she talks about the creative process and the cycles it goes through. I especially like the idea of waiting as a gateway to creativity.

One of the things that has fallen through the cracks (i.e., I’m not doing it at all) is morning pages. Morning pages are a fundamental part of the practices in The Artist’s Way. They allow you to brain dump onto a page and clear out the cobwebs that are gunking up whatever is hindering you.

The problem is…morning.

I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination. The only time I am fully alert and quasi-functional before 10 a.m. (and 10 a.m. is pushing it) is if I am still up from the night before. I used to work the overnight shift at one of our residence halls, and it was the perfect schedule for me.

Before you jump to give advice, let me assure you - I’ve tried it. Believe me, I have. This whole society runs according to morning people’s whims, and my life would be so much easier if I could adapt my sleep schedule (yes I’ve tried the things. All the things.), focus, motivation, etc., to accommodate said whims. I have learned to fake it somewhat, and that’s going to have to be good enough.

I don’t really need to get a full night’s sleep ever during the week. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.

One might argue that you don’t need to be coherent to write morning pages when you first wake up. But finding something to say is not the issue. Waking up even earlier than the ungodly time I already have to be awake in time to make it to work is the issue. Just…no.

Come to think of it, the last time my morning pages habit dropped off was when I switched to working days. Before then I did them after my night shift, which still seemed a little cheaty. I was still not doing them when I first woke up. But technically, it was morning.

Writing this out is a good reminder to me that I am more likely to reap the benefits of doing my daily pages my way than not doing them at all. Adapting my morning pages habit to a different time of day still accomplished for me all the things they’re meant to do. I imagine that would still be the case now, so I’m going to give it a try again.

I’m glad that Julia Cameron advises creatives not to overthink morning pages. That’s a relief. I’m not sure that she meant to not overthink them to the extent that you do them whenever or just stop doing them at all, but it’s still comforting nonetheless.

All this is to say that it’s OK to give yourself permission to break the rules. Especially other people’s rules. Even when they’re as wonderful and knowledgeable as Julia Cameron.