Summer Is I-Comin' In

Love that sun, even if I do block it out when I'm working

That's a bit premature, you might think, but allow me to explain...

I've had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do with my life since the age of eleven, and one of the things I looked forward to about freelance adult life was the ability to set my own hours. "It'll be wonderful," I thought to myself in a piping Adrian Mole sort of way, "of course, I'll have to do enough hours each day to get the work done, but even so, I can start late and work late if I have to. Why, even being really practical, I'll never have to get up earlier than, oh, say, eight o'clock again..."

I reckoned without the perversity of existence.

Though my natural sleep cycle would lead me to get up about 10 and go to bed around 2am, I find that if I get up much later than 7am I just can't make myself get down to work. Even more perversely, I get more efficient the earlier I start, meaning I average a 6am start during busy periods, creeping back to 5am if I'm really pushed. Getting up early makes my feel like sh*t, plus, given that I've lived most of my life without central heating, the winter starts could be less than comfortable. Still, the system has its advantages; for example, when I finally reach full consciousness (usually about 7.30am), I already have a load of work done.

So where does summer come into this? Well, in my unscientific way, I divide the year into D'Israeli Summer Time (DST) and D'Israeli Winter Time (DWT). Unlike the official measure, there's no change of clocks or anything; DST starts on the first day I wake up for work* in daylight, and the first dread day that starts in darkness marks the entrance to the long, dark tunnel that is DWT.

And - you guessed it - I woke up on Monday to weak, watery sunlight - though given that I've been allowing myself a lie in till 6.30am the last month or so, I suppose I might be cheating a bit. Still, aside from the prospect of daylight and warmer days to come, I got to spend this morning building model spaceships and getting to call it work.

Bliss.

*not necessarily the first day it actually is light that early, just the first day I get to experience it.