One morning, I decided to get up earlier than I usually do, and it was a game changer. So, basically I am not a morning person. I love the sunrise, but it’s an arduous job to get myself out-of-the-bed. A steaming cup of filter coffee, a deluxe breakfast in bed, a beautiful view, sweet nothings from my significant other, you name it.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing drives me to get up early besides the fact that I have work, school drop offs, breakfast to be done in advance and other mundane things to do. Waking up early was more of a compulsion rather than something I enjoyed.
So what made me get up so early on this particular morning, even before my alarm screamed.
No it wasn’t the screechy “mammmmma” of my toddler either.
It was the motivation. The motivation to make the most of my Golden Hour.
That Golden hour, when everyone in my humble abode is asleep. I have that whole hour to myself , without any interruptions. No ‘mamma where are you’, ‘sweety can you please hand me my towel?”, ‘did you switch on the geyser ?’……no, not a sound.
Pin drop silence.
I have never heard the sound of my own breath in almost two years and over. My breaths were in synchronisation with the morning song of the Indian Robin. I almost felt like I was an ornithologist, sitting and doing their routine observations. The number of birds I saw was unbelievable.
I live in one of the oldest military cantonment of the country, and therefore the fauna is dense and indigenous too, and has been left as it is in most areas, for the purpose of camouflage.
I will leave the morning scene of living adjacent to a desert jungle to be spoken about in a different write-up.
This is about the Golden Hour.
I have never been so productive in a very long time, especially in a short span of 40 minutes. I set the timer on my phone, took out my journal and scribbled in urgency all the ideas that kept coming. The adrenaline was rushing through my veins, I could feel it.
I was briefly interrupted by the orderly who brought a cup of coffee, for my husband, not for me. A sigh of disappointment. But then he was not expecting me to be sitting on the patio, scribbling about in a fancy notebook at such an early hour. He seemed to conceal an expression of amusement. Or maybe I was too conscious of being judged. Maybe it would not have been the case had I been doing ‘Pranayama’ on my Yoga mat.
I looked back on the stopwatch. 10 minutes more.
Gosh, I spent fifty five seconds on such a-wasteful thought of being judged. It didn’t matter at that point.
I had to finish my exercise.
The Golden Hour was about to have an abrupt end, as my stop watch was running a marathon of numbers.
There, 40 minutes gone. And I was done. In fact I also did a quick revision of the 4 page notes I had scribbled in that beautifully lined journal book.
In that moment I had some enlightenment. It dawned upon me that getting hold of that most productive hour of the day, is what motivates me to be an early morning person. It is that kick, I get out of writing in an “environment rid of interruptions”.
It is to catch the Golden Hour of my day and make the most of it. It is true, that there is more productivity in that quality of hour, than quantity. Besides that, the orderly now gets two cups of coffee. I think I did strike a good deal, and the outcome is rewarding too.
