Tag Archives: sunlight

Morning light

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I love waking up to my room getting lighter. My body just tells me it’s time to get up. As each day has slowly gotten longer we are now at the point where light creeps through the edges of our darkened curtains and signals me that it is time to rise. With a 5am wake up time, it takes until this time of year for that to actually happen.

My perfect routine would be in bed by 11pm, wake up at 5 to 5:30am, then a nice siesta in the afternoon. But I can’t siesta at work, so I force myself to bed before 10pm. Still, a night like last night had me up until almost 11 anyway. Even a couple sleep meditations couldn’t get me to sleep.

Yet it was easy to wake up before my alarm this morning. With daylight sneaking into the room my body told me it was time to get up. And so for the next few months my mornings will be a lot easier, and I’ll awaken ready for the day… all thanks to the morning light.

into the dark

I drove home from work well after dark last night. It’s 7am and it’s pitch black outside. I saw the sun out my window yesterday just before lunch, and that was the only natural light I really saw for the day. At least we could see the sun, there were quite a few days last week where you didn’t know where in the sky the sun was, because the cloud cover was too heavy.

I know I left Barbados at the young age of 9. I know that most of my life has been spent with winter days being short and dark. Still, I just can’t get used to it. I want to live somewhere that the shortest day of the year is still over 11 hours. Yes, it got dark shortly after dinner every day in Barbados. Yes, that’s a stark difference from summer nights here, when we can still see the sun in the sky after 9pm. But that consistency of seeing the sun every day, the wonderful experience of having it be bright and clear… and warm… every morning, this is something I wish I had.

I don’t think I’d ever end up living full time anywhere except Canada, but when I retire I’m going to do my best not to be in the dark for January and February. I am going to seek out holidays that are filled with long, bright, warm days. These short, cold, dark winter days are really not my thing.