Day 279 of 1827: Self-Expectations

One of the more interesting aspects of my Five Years Abroad has been discovering how many expectations I have of myself that I’ve been carrying around all my life and was never aware of.

For example, I always used to think that I should be a morning person.  And to be fair, the days that I get up early and get right to work are incredibly productive.

The thing is, though, now that I don’t have any kind of external system that forces me to get up early (i.e., now that I don’t have a job with a physical location), I find that I almost never do it.

And I really don’t know what to make of that.

I mean, I still like the idea of getting up early… but if it was really that important to me, then how come I can never make it happen?

Very curious.

Now… this morning, I actually did get up pretty early; I had to be on a Skype call with a potential business partner in the Middle East, and I figured mid-afternoon would be a good time to chat with him.

Mid-afternoon his time, I mean.  For me, that was about 8 in the morning.

For somebody who’s been struggling to wake up earlier than 10 o’clock lately, this was a big deal.

So clearly, when there’s someone else that is depending on me, or there’s some other external factor that’s important to me, I can get up early and start getting things done.

Which means I now have a challenge.

Do I accept that I am just not a morning person and embrace the nights when I stay up late getting things done?  Or do I commit to changing this aspect of my lifestyle and put in the effort to build new habits?

Either way, what I don’t want to do is to continue to get up late and feel bad about it!  Talk about getting the worst of both worlds!

This one’s going to require some thought.

Five Years Abroad opens your eyes to all the alternate paths you’ve overlooked throughout your life. But it won’t tell you which ones to try. I swear, nothing in life is ever easy!