Re: “If you ever doubt the Theoi are real and have influence in our world, one of Them turned me into a morning person.”
I've hesitated to tell this story because it involves a godphone moment and I’m shy about sharing those, but I’d really like to tell people who will Get It.
So, at one point I was writing almost every day. Then I got out of grad school and I thought “I need to sit down and take a break for a minute.” Then six months went by. Then I sharpened my pencils and tried to think of some ideas. Then another six months went by. This stretched on for almost four years, until this spring I was actually wondering if I was done as a writer.
Then an acquaintance talked up The Artist’s Way to me --- for those unfamiliar, it’s a 12-week course designed to break creative blocks through journaling and exercises clustered around several topics. The basic structure and themes are inspired by addiction recovery support groups, and central to the book is the idea of God as the ultimate creative force in the universe and the source of all inspiration. I thought “I read that book when I was about eighteen, but back then I was an atheist and I didn’t have substance abuse problems. I bet it looks completely different now.” I also thought, “I’m stuck in the house during COVID. If nothing else, this could be a way to mark time passing.” (I’m on week 11 right now.)
Having skimmed the book before starting, it was pretty clear to me that the author means “God” not as any specific deity but as a shorthand for “the essential force of creation in the universe"... which happens to be very much how I experience Phanes. So I lit some incense, told Them what I was doing, and asked if They wanted to take part of it with me.
A thought that isn’t mine: If you’ll do all the exercises.
I’d reviewed the weekly journaling assignments and exercises, and was pretty sure I wouldn’t run into any problems completing them, but I was balking at the “morning pages” that are a key part of this process: get up 30 minutes earlier and handwrite 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness writing. Not the writing part, but the getting up part.
I am not a morning person and never have been. I’ve made long-standing career decisions based on the fact that I cannot be a functioning human before 9:30 AM, including the decision to be self-employed and work from home. Left to my own devices, I’ll naturally wake up around 11 AM and fall asleep around 3 AM.
But over the past few years, I’d realized that if I want to be a writer again, I have to get up earlier. I need a daily practice to make progress on anything. And I have a writing job that’s highly absorbing, so creative writing has to come first in the day. I’d been trying to wake up 30 minutes earlier and write for years. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but at the time of this prayer, I was struggling to get to my desk before 10:30.
I said “I’m confident I can do all the exercises, except for getting up 30 minutes earlier to do the morning pages. I don’t believe I can do that.”
Another thought that isn’t mine: What if I helped you?
I said “You’re welcome to try, but I don’t believe it’s possible.”
The next morning, I set my alarm for 30 minutes earlier, dragged my ass out of bed, and filled 3 pages with profanity. Day 2, same thing. I I figured I could keep it up for maybe 4 days in a row before I’d sleep through my alarm and miss my chance. But then something wild happened: I started waking up before my alarm went off. The first few times I thought I’d slept through my alarm again, and I was genuinely surprised to grab my phone and see that it was before 9:00. 9 is a hard red line for me. A morning hour beginning with 8 is a country I’m not allowed to visit. How was I awake?
I decided not to ask and to get to the morning pages. By the end of the second week it was happening so consistently that I’d pushed back my alarm to 8:30. Then I started waking up before that. I adjusted my alarm again for 15 minutes earlier, and I started waking up before that alarm, too. Sometime along the way, my wake-up time sailed into an hour beginning with 7. How was that even possible?
“I can’t believe this,” I said to a friend. “I’ve tried every trick there is to get up earlier, and nothing helped. Now it’s happening with no effort on my part.”
“Is your brain looking forward to its morning dump?” she asked.
“Divine intervention,” I said. “It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.”
I was now waking up around 7:15, early enough to be at my desk by 9 AM every day, and even more amazingly, I was clear-headed and alert even without coffee. For reference: The last time I got up at 7:15 every day, I was in high school, and no way was I conscious before second period. Almost instantly, my work life snapped into an orderly 9 to 5 with a lunch break. My nights and weekends are now reclaimed as personal time. By this point I was approaching my altar every morning like “HOW? HOW are you doing this?”
I realized that if I could push my wake-up time an hour earlier, I could write for an hour at my computer before going to work. So I set my alarm for 15 minutes earlier until I started waking up naturally beforehand, then dialed it back another 15 minutes. 7AM… 6:45… 6:30… 6:15!
I now wake up at 6 AM every day and I have for the past month. I’m sure this may not sound miraculous to people who’ve ever been able to reset their sleep schedules. But when I told my entire family and all my friends, including people who have known me for almost a decade, that I now get up at 6, all of them refused to believe it. So I sent text messages first thing in the morning that say HEY LOOK AT ME!
This is now my weekday routine: up at 6, morning pages, shower and get dressed, do prayers, express gratitude and astonishment to the god/dess who turned me into a morning person, write at my computer for an hour, and then go to work at 9. I’m closing out week 11/12 and not only have I done every exercise in the book so far, I’ve done the morning pages every. single. day. And I have learned my lesson about doubting Them.
