Waking Up is the Worst Part of the Day

I really don't like waking up. Especially when the temperature outside is 70 degrees less than the temperature inside. My alarm sings the "Psych" theme song and I wake up, but then I remember that old Christmas classic, "the weather outside is frightful, and my bed is so delightful..." or something like that. I'll tell you why waking up is the worst part of the day; there are two reasons.

1. Elementary school playground logic - Sleeping is comfortable and stress free, being awake is less of each of those. This discrepancy causes cognitive dissonance. We are happy asleep, but we are waking up, and probably would prefer to stay asleep. This means our actions are not in line with our thinking, hence the dissonance. How do we deal with dissonance? Rationalization! Adding a new cognition, or thought, to be precise. This is why I like to use elementary school playground logic. Remember this "first is the worst, second is the best, third is the one with the hairy chest"? This is adding a new cognition. In order to feel good about yourself when you come in second in the race for the swings at recess, you sing this little song to the person who beat you, and for good measure you alienate the person who came in right after you. Makes perfect sense. Anyway, I add this cognition, and it works, because the first thing I do each day is wake up, practically speaking. Technically you could say the first thing I do is sleep, as I am asleep at midnight when the calendar says it is a new day. But to embrace that idea would be to harsh on my buzz from harshing on waking up. If I acknowledge that the first thing I do each day is sleep for 6 hours, how do I have any ground to stand my complaints on? To sum it up, the first thing I do is wake up, and first is the worst...

The rest of this post can be found in the Ajax's Whimsical Revolution ebook for Amazon's Kindle. The book is a compilation of my favorite posts, 78 to be exact, of which this is one. If you don't have a Kindle e-reader you can download the free Amazon Kindle app for PC or Mac.