"Nobody is more shocked than me to discover I’ve become a morning person."

Nobody is more shocked than me to discover I’ve become a morning person. I’ve spent my whole life reviling morning people for their ability to leap out of bed as the sun comes up (or even, gasp before) without bitterness or swearing.

How is that even possible, I’ve always muttered darkly to myself as I roll over and snuggle deeper under the covers feeling grateful all over again that I’m not Lisa Wilkinson who has to set her alarm for something that starts with a two.

I thought having kids would make me a morning person but nope. Sure, I had to get up at all the ungodly hours, particularly when my kids were babies and toddlers but I never got used to it, never embraced it, never did it with any resemblance of maturity or good cheer.

Since I can remember, I’ve always been a drag-my-arse-out-of-bed-resentfully-after-hitting-the-snooze-button-enough-times-to-give-myself-RSI kind of girl. And while I’d like to say it’s served me well, it hasn’t really. I’m always scrambling in the morning. Always grumpy. Always barking at the kids to HURRY UP AND GET IN THE CAR WE’RE REALLY LATE I DON’T CARE THAT YOU FORGOT YOUR GUITAR YOU WILL HAVE TO PLAY AIR GUITAR NOW GET IN THE DAMN CAR BEFORE I LOSE IT. Ooops, I already did. Most mornings.

For the past six months or so though, this has changed. I have woken alert (and mildly alarmed by the fact I am, in fact, alert) anywhere between 5 and 6am.

I no longer hit the snooze button.

Instead, I slip silently out of bed and tip-toe downstairs with a stealthy determination not unlike the kind I applied with great effect when I was 15 years old and regularly snuck out of the house to hook up with my boyfriend in the middle of the night.

The only difference is now, instead of trying to avoid waking my parents, I’m trying to avoid waking my kids.

Desperately. Because those minutes – and it’s rarely more than minutes – that I’ve carved out in the morning before my family wake have become my most precious time of day. They are sacred to me.

Having made it downstairs successfully, I boil the kettle and immediately commence making sweet sweet love with my phone, hungrily, sleepily absorbing all the information with which I need to reboot my life for the next 24hrs. The news, the weather, my emails, calendar and texts, a bit of Facebook, a quick scan of my favourite sites to get across my various specialist interest, a fleeting check of Twitter to see if I have any firefighting to do and – invariably I won’t get to do anywhere near all of this before a small child comes padding down the stairs and demands my full attention.

And we’re off. My actual day, where I’m at the total behest of everyone else in my life, begins.

I’m not complaining about this. OK, I am. A bit.

Inevitable Disclaimer: I love my kids and feel so very fortunate to have them and my husband and job I love etc etc.

It’s just that in every hour of my life, I have the sense that I’m stealing time from someone or something and sometimes the stealing feels like I’m being crushed from the outside or the inside or possibly both.

At work, I feel like I’m stealing time from my kids. When I’m with them, I feel like I’m stealing time from work because I left the office early to pick them up from school. The sense of being in constant deficit to everyone in my life – my kids, my husband, my parents, my girlfriends, my co-workers, hell, even my dog who would really like me to throw the ball please, just once, will you throw it, please – often feels like running on a treadmill with the speed being imperceptibly cranked up until you’re running so hard you can barely breathe and there is no end in sight because there is no end.

So, mornings.

I can’t tell you how delicious it feels, how indulgent, how illicit……to have those minutes sitting quietly, sometimes in the pre-dawn light, with my cup of tea and my phone, beholden to nobody, missed by no-one, accountable to nothing.

My husband, when he beckons me back to bed at 5:45am, doesn’t remotely understand this idea of deficit. When he’s at work, he’s at work. When he’s with the kids, there he is. He spends time with his friends or he doesn’t. He speaks to his mum or he doesn’t. The idea of guilt or remorse or self-flagellation or stealing time is baffling to him. It’s wasted energy.

He’s absolutely right and I envy him this simplicity of thought, this ability to just do what he’s doing instead of feeling anxious about who he’s not with or what he’s not doing.

Since I am biologically incapable of that, I’ll content myself with setting my alarm just that little bit earlier each day.

Don’t tell my kids.

Are you a morning person?