There are 2 things that I’m just not and I’ve been wanting to be:
1. Being a morning person
2. Being a little more OCD
Let’s talk about #2 first. I wish I could be more OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). OCD people have really clean and neat houses, because they are obsessed over it. And I like my house to be clean and neat. Clean, I am, and my bathroom is spotless most of the time, but it’s really hard to keep the house exceptionally clean with 4 cats that are indoor/outdoor cats. That’s why I have a cleaning lady now, which helps a whole lot.
But I am not the neatest person around by far. I have been known in my childhood to be really untidy. I think it’s because I grew up with really neat parents (yes, Kelly, blame the parents). They are pretty ridiculous. When we travel together, the first thing they do in a hotel room is to unpack everything neatly and arrange everything. My father’s office table has all his pens parallel to each other…and everything else that is not parallel is perpendicular. And this is the view of my office desk where nothing is parallel.

So my parents (and my brother actually) always straightened things up after I leave a mess for me, without really scolding me about it. They scold about a lot of things, but this just wasn’t a thing they scolded me about. It was one of those situations where, as long as I did well in school and was studying, I could leave a mess with my study books around if I like. And marrying someone that is certainly not the tidiest person by far doesn’t help either. It only makes me look like the neatER person, when I’m not. We just do not have the natural instinct like some people do to neaten up our stuff as we go along. It takes an effort to remember to tidy up the place. I have gotten better at that, mainly because I get really stressed up when I see the house in a mess (bad feng shui or something). But I’m trying to get to the point where it comes naturally to me. Like my father and his parallel pens. I remember traveling with my best friend once. Every time she left the bathroom, every single bottle in the bathroom will be lined up in a perfectly straight line, according to height. That’s just nuts! It could totally be a ‘be careful what you wish for thing’, but I almost wish I was that OCD, so I’d have a neater home/office.
As for #1, I’ve always thought of myself as a night person, and I’ve always slept ALOT. My mom likes to tell me that when I was born, I just cried for a while, then I fell asleep for a long time (let’s home that when I do have a baby, he/she will sleep throughout the first 5 years or something…). In my weekends, I’d just sleep for 12 hours. Even when I do wake up, I’d just lay in bed for another couple of hours before I get up. My mom would be walking around doing laundry and say “Kelly jin ho miah (very good life) can sleep so long” while I just lay there.
I used to -have- to read something to fall asleep. With a good book, I’d just stay up all night reading it cos I didn’t wanna stop reading. And I’d occasionally get nights of insomnia where I just couldn’t sleep. In college, my sleeping patterns was just wonky. I’d stay up all night chatting online, surfing the web, watching tv…I had my computer and tv in my own room…it was hard to stay away from these things. I just thought it was my “natural” instinct to just stay up late.
But here’s where Pat helped me a bunch…being a school teacher, he was in bed by 10 or 11pm every work night. He refused to have any TV or computer or radio in his bedroom (aside from the time he lived in a studio). It was the best habit I’d ever picked up. Nothing with caffeine after 4pm. Before bedtime, things just get really quiet and dim in the Chansidine household. I can’t even read in bed now. Most nights, I fall asleep within minutes of hitting the pillow. And I’m telling you, I love to sleep so much that I really appreciate being able to sleep so well.
But the problem is, I still freaking sleep 10-12 hours if I don’t have something to wake up for! And that’s why I wish I was one of those people that just can’t sleep past 8am or something. I’d love to instinctively wake up at 7 or 8am and be just up and ready to go. Instead, when my alarm goes off at 7:20am on work days, I hit the snooze button at least 4 times before I’m actually up…when I’m up and outta the shower, I’m usually fine, but it’s hard to get up. And if you could see my “lemon face” (as Pat calls it) or “chao bin” (smelly face, as my father calls it. He used to tell me when waking me up for school that he pities my future husband because he’d have to see my ’smelly face’ every morning. Sorry Patty!) in the morning…wooooo!! I could turn people to stone. And I really believe sleeping too long isn’t very good for me because I definitely feel groggy more when I sleep too much. I love activities that you can do in the morning, like going to the park and doing yoga and feeling fresh and chirpy. There’s nothing these days I really wanna do in the night, since I am pretty much over going out to clubs.
I’m pretty sure that it’s more a nurture than a nature thing, and I’m adamant about changing my nurture. I’m not “naturally” a night person…I’ve just been told that I was all my life and I’ve allowed myself to be distracted by modern technology to stay up later than I should. I know this because when we were in Tulum, and we had no electricity for most of the time, and no internet, no cell phone, nothing…we were in bed by 9 or 10pm and I got up automatically every morning at 7am.
And of course, I then google search “how to be a morning person” and found this site explaining how to train yourself to be a morning person. The crux of that site says to go to bed only when you’re too sleepy to stay up (not a big problem for me), and get up at a fixed time every morning (need to work on it on weekends), and when you get up, to get up immediately, not hit the snooze button and have conversations in your head about why you should sleep in (working on it).
So last night, I went to bed early (before 11pm) and set my alarm to 7am (usually I get outta bed at 7:40am) and told myself that I was gonna wake up the moment my alarm went off. The weird thing was that I got up right before my alarm went off, and sat right up and forced myself outta bed without thinking, as I usually do, that I have a little more time to sleep. This morning, I feel fresher than ever. It’s true! I’m gonna try to keep up with this experiment over the weekend (7am Sat and Sun baby!) and see how much better I feel. If anything, I need that extra time to study, because I’m totally FREAKING out about the CFA. ugh.
okay, rambling post leading to nowhere.