If I want to get anything done now, I have to squeeze it into the morning. That is where I am in life. Morning is my best time for doing anything. If only I could tell myself it’s always five o’clock in the morning somewhere!
It wasn’t always this way. Like the sun & the moon & the tides and & seasons, the best time of day changes with well, time.
In adolescence, it was clearly the night. I wasn’t alone in having enormous energy all night long, and difficulty rising anytime before noon. High schools should be rescheduled into night schools to accommodate for this phenomena. The hard part would be finding teachers. Students might have to police themselves and run their own curriculum. Older adults and high school students would totally miss each other, and perhaps that would be a good thing.
We are either Morning People, Afternoon People, or Night People, and as we age, we change tribes. I haven’t figured out who the Afternoon People are.
“I know this much,” writes Julian Barnes in The Sense of an Ending, “…. there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.”
Which reminds me to get busy and redesign my clock. I would have it that the clock read a.m. all day long, and only go into p.m. at night, when I want to wind down. Mornings simply aren’t long enough anymore, and if I am going to accomplish anything in life I must try to absorb the Afternoons too—until someone comes around to claim them.
a little elbow room
a little elbow room 
Sometimes I give myself a “second morning” via one of my favorite vices: the 4pm cup of coffee. aahh. I blame my Finnish blood!
I am a sometimes morning, afternoon and night person. My energy and focus go thru cycles all day long. Happily, I am very rarely a get up at 3 AM to work on a project person.
My preference would be to sleep from 4 p.m. to 7 then again from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. AND why not? Here is a NYT’s article that speaks to different rhythms for waking and sleeping http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/rethinking-sleep.html?
A good post Kim, like the last one, a common theme we all think about. I am thinking about the afternoon people, thanks to you. Who are they? I am not sure but I know the streets are full of them from 1:30 to 3:30 pm. Parents picking up their kids, teenagers getting out of school and getting home or to their job. Contractors roaming from job sites to suppliers getting ready for the next day and their workers heading home, get this, because “It’s too late to start on something new.”
I might be on to something here. Afternoon people are are are….wuuuups! Too late to start that now, it’ll have to wait ’til mañana. Speaking of mañana, much of the world is having siesta in the afternoon and I approve.
I like the quotes from others and I like the circular wrap up, “until someone comes around to claim them”. The afternoon people I assume. This would be a good place for a new word or two. Shakespeare is credited with 3 to 4 thousand first time usages. I think I would be delighted with one. How about you?
Al Finn
Preaching to the choir here, sister.