Waking up is hard to do

I have a chronic problem of not being able to get out of bed in the mornings when I need to. Usually this results in me being late for work. I'm lucky in that the managers at my office are pretty lenient when it comes to arriving late. Especially in a town where the public transit system is less than reliable. But as much as I'd like to blame all of my arriving at work late woes on the T, the truth is I just can't get up on time.

For awhile I was able to trick myself in to getting up early by looking forward to doing something in the morning besides just go to work. Like play video games. When I was younger, I would often rent a video game for the weekend. My desire to play that game would out weigh my desire to sleep, and I would be able to wake up at 7 AM on a Saturday without any other device (such as an alarm clock) just because I knew that waking up meant I got to play. So I started to play World of Warcraft in the mornings from 6 to 7 before I got ready for work, and was able to get out the door in a much timelier fashion. Occasionally I would play longer than I should though and still get out late, but it was never so late that it was a problem.

Well, in more recent times, since my wife is also playing the game with me, we tend to stay up late playing, and this has made it harder to wake up to play. I guess there's a limit to how much sleep I can live on, even if there's something to look forward to waking up for in the morning. The solution is that I need to go to bed earlier, and you would think that was an easy thing to accomplish, but there's always something that needs to be done late at night that seems to keep me up past midnight. It's going to take a concentrated force of will to make this happen, but I need to do it for the bettering of myself, and to shake off the reputation for coming into work late.

It's not like I get a free pass to get into work late either, I have to make up the time I miss in the morning by staying late in the afternoons. I'd much rather get here on time and leave here on time, than have to stay until 5:40 and not get home until 7. Today was an especially bad day where I just didn't wake up at all. I had to call in and say I'd be working a half day as I didn't want to have to work until 9. Now some of you out there reading this, (three of you maybe?), might say, "Oh my goodness! Who is this slacker that can't even get to work on time?" I just want you to know that I agree with you. I don't like this habit I've developed, and I've recognized it's a problem, so don't worry. My boss is aware of it, and I'm aware of it, and I'm on a 12 step program to fix it. With the first 12 steps being go to bed earlier.