For the last year or so it has been my goal to quit the snooze button.

As time dragged on, I hit snooze more and more, and eventually I was barely getting up in time to get the kids up. Turns out it’s quite stressful to rush from bed to waking up kids and making coffee and lunches while cooking breakfast, and well, it’s a wonder no one has been injured.

Each morning I would say “Leigh Ann, you should just ge—-” and then I would fall asleep again. I tried to implement Mel Robbins’s 5 second rule: “When you feel yourself hesitate before doing something that you know you should do, count 5-4-3-2-1-GO and move towards action.” But no one was pushing me out of bed, so the “GO” turned into “GOOOOO back to sleep.”

A podcast I listen to suggested quitting the snooze button. This sounded crazy, yet intriguing. Turns out that although I felt like I was sleeping longer by snoozing, the interrupted sleep wasn’t quality sleep. So I may as well set my alarm for a later time and just – boop! – pop out of bed like a deranged jack-in-the-box or a morning person.*

But now I had a new goal. A friend of mine decided to lead a Facebook group through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a book meant to help people on the path to creative recovery. I’m nothing if not a sucker for a good self-help creative book.

Part of The Artist’s Way – the main part, really – is the Morning Pages, three pages of longhand journaling done first thing in the morning, before anything else (except coffee and feeding the cat because one would be insane and the other is just fucking annoying).

So I knew in order to get these Morning Pages done, I’d have to kick the snooze habit. I’d need to get up that extra 30 minutes early to get this done.

I’d need to commit. *shudder*

And friends, I am on day seven. And while day one may have given me so much anxiety that I forced myself to wrench my eyes open because I was sure it was morning and I was NOT going to sleep through this alarm, only to find out it was 2:38 a.m. (technically morning! but still), and then again at 5:32 a.m., until I finally woke up at exactly 5:59 a.m., and who says internal clocks are a farce?

Okay, I accidentally hit snooze this morning and almost convinced myself to stay in bed for “just 9 more minutes,” but Committed Leigh Ann took over and remembered how nice it feels to sit in the quiet kitchen with coffee and no one talking to her.

I’m not ready to call this a new habit – remember, I suck at habits – but maybe we can call this a streak? Like when My Fitness Pal says “You’ve logged in seven days in a row!” But less annoying because my Morning Pages aren’t reminding me how many carbs that croissant has.

*Despite my snoozing, I am actually a morning person. Once I’m up, I’m up and ready to start the day. Once you start thinking about coffee, there’s really no point in not drinking it.