Are you a morning person?

by NATALIA HAWK

My Significant Other is a morning person and I hate it.

Perhaps ‘hate’ is too strong a word. But I do confess to very strong feelings of extreme dislike when it’s 7 o’clock on a Saturday morning and he wants to have a really long conversation about everything under the bloody sun, despite having had only 4.5 hours of sleep and no caffeine whatsoever.

Then again, I hate EVERYTHING in the morning. I don’t really wake up properly until 9am and until then my brain is limited to a very basic ‘rage’ function. My alarm going off, cold tiles in the bathroom, annoying people on the radio, the bus running late – they’re all causes for a whole lot of crankiness.

I seem to be the very definition of an evening person. While said Significant Other is falling asleep at the dinner table, I am wondering whether we should see a 9:30pm movie session or go ice-skating or perhaps there’s even a marathon that needs to be run? I look at my bed at 11pm, wondering if I should lie down and my brain screams “BUT LOOK, I’M STILL SO ACTIVE!”

I can’t even fall asleep at night. I usually just pass out when my brain suddenly short-circuits and dies. In this way I am much like some kind of freak night-owl robot. Fun.

But now I’m re-evaluating because it seems that morning people are generally much happier – and even healthier – people.

From the Huffington Post:

Morning people aren’t chipper just as the sun is coming up; they are happier and more satisfied with life overall, a new study suggests.

Morning-type people also tended to say they felt healthier than did night owls. The researchers said this could be because they are getting better sleep since they are naturally morning people. It could not only make them feel more alert, but actually impact their immune system.

For instance, most people rise early for work or school, even if they don’t like it. “An evening person may go through their week feeling unhappy because they have to get up earlier than they would like to,” Biss said.

Apparently there are things I can do to change my habits, like getting more sleep… well, that might happen around the same time that the Time Lords add an three extra hours into each day.

Are you a morning person or a night owl? Do you and your partner share the same sleeping patterns or do you drive each other mad? Do you think morning people are happier and healthier?