I, too, am no morning person. I have no idea what enables people to willingly wake up at o-dark-thirty, but people do it. Some of them do even crazier things like go running or swimming at that ungodly hour. I have the utmost respect for these dedicated souls, even if I do think they should consider a thorough psychiatric evaluation.
The only time woke up early without whining about it was X-mas morning when I was a little kid, and that was probably because all the anticipation adrenaline kept me from sleeping. My grandmother used to get up early and have a bowl of Corn Flakes while she read the newspaper. Corn Flakes and milk were perpetually on her shopping list, and eating that cereal and looking at that smudgy gray printing seemed to be the most grown up thing in the world. While I always yearned to be a grown-up, I never quite managed to get out of bed in time to enjoy that breakfast ritual while watching the sun rise.
They now offer night school for high school kids. If they had that when I was a kid, well, I wouldn’t have been tardy at least once a week to first period. I hated high school and I hated getting up early. Those two things together were like a perfect storm of loathing, and it was a lesser miracle that I made it all the way until the twelfth grade.
Towards the end at my old job, we were having status meetings every morning at 7:30. It was the exact same meeting every day; we talked about all the projects that didn’t go anywhere because all of our effort was put into fighting fires. The meetings would have been horrible no matter what time of day; any team that is forced to start each and every day with self-flagellation is doomed. The early hour was like adding insult to injury; the meeting was set at that time half to spite me. We eventually cut back to every other day and finally to once a week, and maybe they’re still having it and recycling the same meeting notes by scratching out the date.
I think a large part of if I’m going to have a good day or a bad one is determined in the first two hours. Despite the fact that I’m a geek and thus afraid of the sun, I tend to be in a better mood if the sky I see out the window is blue rather than cloudy when I first wake up. Maybe that’s why runners and swimmers get up early to work out: they have complete control over the first act of each day’s drama. That has to beat the rushed and disjointed chaos I go through.