ARE YOU A MORNING PERSON?

I HAVE to ask: How do you answer the question: “Are you a morning person?” Are you one of those people who wakes up every morning with an air of positivity that seems to flow out of your pores, much like the pungent smell of my curry after a night of Indian cuisine? Or, perhaps, when the alarm goes off in the anti-evening, do you hit the snooze button? Do you lay there accompanied by the awareness that you need 10 more minutes just 10 more — OK, maybe 20.

Are you the person who hears the alarm and swings your rejuvenated legs, in their soft cotton pajamas with matching top, on to the edge of the bed? Then, do you, with a slight arch of the back in a perfect warrior pose, leap off the bed like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs? You greet the morning with a smile.

Moreover, your morning is most likely starting a good hour to two earlier than you need to leave to make your first appointment. For you, breakfast is an opportunity to find a center for the day, peruse the paper (yes, they still deliver these) of all that happened after 9 p.m., when you went to bed. The smell of bacon, eggs and coffee brewing is the all-too-familiar calling to the start of your day, as opposed to the realization that the extra 30 minutes of snooze time has taken away any chance you had of making a quick coffee run. And since the Indian food, which had not completely settled in your stomach, is demanding you take a few (now precious) minutes to visit the Kohler, you are even more pinched … for time.

As a morning person, you’ll never know the feeling of having no time to blow dry your noggin, iron the clothes you decided to wear while trying to wake up in the shower or the stark realization that you have lines on your face from your pillow case — or worse yet — from a Trader Joe’s dark chocolate wrapper.

Is driving to work a scene from any 1950’s sitcom, with chattering, singing and whistling? (Really, whistling? Come on; who whistles in the morning?) While others are doing their best impression of Ricky Bobby saluting all the other drivers that seem to be placed in front of them as human obstacles, all the while seeing random people walking along with a smile on their faces, you beg the question: “What are you smiling at? It is morning!” Meanwhile, you are at your office in enough time to read emails, and get that second cup of coffee.

Where do you lie? (Pun intended.) Embracing the existence of morning like a newly found sibling your father sired on a 1969 trip to Europe or cursing it? I think you probably have garnered what side of the fence I lie. (These puns rock!)

You may ask what does this all have to do with the management of optometry? Well, nothing. I just had a really hard time waking up today. OM

DR. BLOOMENSTEIN practices at Schwartz Laser Eye Center in Scottsdale, Ariz. He is a founding member of the Optometric Council on Refractive Technology. He is a speaker and advisory board member for: Allergan, Bausch + Lomb, Shire, Akorn, TearLab, OcuSoft, Lunovus and AMO. Email him at mbloomenstein@gmail.com or visit tinyurl.com/OMComment to comment.