Ok y’all—today’s post is admittedly a little bit random and probably will be more stream of consciousness more than anything, but it’s been on my mind all week, so I wanted to write about it.

Last week, I was at happy hour with my old coworkers, Gabby and Olivia, and we were talking about our daily routines. It’s funny because I used to work with both of them, and when you spend upwards of 40 hours a week with people, you learn a lot about their lives. Now that we no longer work together, we were all curious how we structure our days, what our workout routines are now, and the hottest lunch places near our respective offices. During this conversation, we started talking about what time we get up every morning, if we hit snooze, what our morning routines look like, and if we make our beds.

It was such an interesting conversation because we started talking a lot about how our culture celebrates the early bird. I mean, have you ever seen an article or blog post that is titled ‘How to Become a Night Owl’? Yet, conversely, I can think of at least a dozen off the top of my head providing advice on how to become a morning person. And it turns out, we had all read The Atlantic article from December entitled The False Promise of Morning Routines, which reads:

“Morning-routine stories are a relatively new trend in the undying genre of self-help. In voyeuristic glimpses into a typically private time of day, the rich and the famous reveal how they are almost invariably superhumanly energetic. They meditate, run several miles, make matcha tea, do some yoga—all before 8 o’clock. Some dive into their email right away. Others ban phones at breakfast. But the through line is the same: A carefully choreographed morning routine is the key to a productive day. These people have it together, the stories seem to imply, and so can you, if you just wake up at 5:30 a.m.”

If you’ve read my blog for any period of time, you’ll know with certainty that I am not a morning person. At all! In my dream world, I could stay up until 2am everyday, sleep until 10am, and then go about my day. (Sadly that lifestyle doesn’t jive with my corporate job!) And I’ve also never desired to be a morning person because I know I am truly wired as a night owl.

A lot of my friends are naturally early risers—they love to get up with the sun, start their day, and, on weekends, probably have lived half their day before I wake up. And that is great for them! But I’ve always found I am way more awake, productive, energized, and creative as the day goes on, and the only thing I really ever got in trouble for in high school was staying up past my bed time.

On a typical weekday, I go to bed between 11:30pm-midnight and get up between 7:30-8am. Some of my early bird friends go to bed between 9-10pm and then get up between 5-6am. What you’ll notice here is that both early birds and night owls are getting the same amount of hours in the day, which is why I have never felt like I need to change my ways.

Since I am not a morning person, I don’t leave much time to get ready before work in the morning. I usually snooze my alarm twice—a terrible habit I picked up in my grad school days—and then hop out of bed, brush my teeth, put on my makeup, get dressed, and run out the door. (I don’t really eat breakfast most days—I’m never hungry right when I wake up.) I used to make my bed every day, then stopped during a stressful period, but lately, I’ve been taking the two minutes to do it since it makes me feel so much more put together. I’d rather sleep as long as possible than enjoy a nice leisurely morning, whereas at night, I have a lot of leisurely routines.

ANYWAY—like I said at the start of this post, I mostly just wanted to chat about this topic since I had such a great conversation with my former work wives in person, I thought it’d make for great blog fodder. And the main point I want to make is if you’re a morning person, that’s great! And if you’re a night owl, that’s great! But you don’t have to force yourself to become a morning person if you’re not—everyone has the same number of hours in the day.

So, I’d love to know—are you a morning person? Do you wish you were? What’s your morning routine like? Drop me a note in the comments below or email me at katie@atouchoteal.com—I’d love to chat.