When I was younger, in high school and college, people called me extremely creative. Among my favorite activities (before high-speed internet was readily available to me) included drawing in pencil, charcoal, or chalk pastel and writing poems and short fiction stories. I filled sketchbook after sketchbook with penciled illustrations, still lifes, cartoons, and perspective designs. (Oh! How I loved perspective design!)

Most nights during high school I would be awake until 2- or 3am. In this time I would finish calculus homework, read non-required books, sketch or paint, or write short stories. I learned to do all these activities with a book light or night light, as my parents would yell at me to sleep if they woke up in the night to pee and noticed my bedroom lights still burning bright.

In college I took a painting course and came away with a love for acrylic—I never could get the hang of oil. More sketchbooks were filled. I submitted a couple drawings to the literary magazine. Late into the night I would listen to the radio and my cassettes, writing articles for the newspaper, of which I was an entertainment editor.

Weekends were wonderful in the spring of 1997 because I found an activity that seemed perfectly timed for me: a local theater showing Rocky Horror Picture Show with a live cast. Most Sunday mornings I would arrive back at the dorms around 4am and immediately fall asleep, snoozing soundly until lunch.

All of these things have ceased, or have become so dramatically sporadic that people are surprised when I present a piece of art. “You did that?” they exclaim, “I didn’t know you could draw.”

I can’t remember the last time I picked up a pencil and made an impression in my sketchbook. Fictional worlds and characters lie undeveloped in my head, when they should be on paper—or in this electronic age, stored on my thumb drive. I miss writing and drawing… for the beauty of creating something from nothing, taking a blank page, performing some magical acts, and leaving with awesomeness.

Lately, knitting has filled this void in me. Some yarn, a few needles, a pattern, and in a week (or a month or a couple hours, in some cases) there’s this item that wasn’t there before! As much as I love knitting, though, it’s not the same.

I’ve since noticed the drop of creativity coincided with my stretch of steady employment starting in June 2000. Since then, I’ve worked with just a two-month unemployment break last winter. The number of creative pieces I’ve produced since then?

Just two: this and this, both, I believe, worked late at night while my husband slept.

Is there a direct relation between my lack of creativity and my conforming to a “lark lifestyle”? Maybe. Perhaps. Probably? I’ll be searching the internet for blogs or articles, hoping to run across a similar experience.

Yes, the title of this blog post is true. Just about each and every morning, I sleep through six alarm clocks.

Six.

1. 7.15am the birds start chirping
2. 7.30am the radio announces the news
3. 7.45am the beeping starts
4. 8.00am the cell phone chimes
5. 8.00am the second beeping begins
6. 8.15am the iPod plays mid-90s modern rock

Ideally I should be out of the house about 8.45am, but no later than 9am. My work start time is 9.30am, but most days I get in between then and 10am.

This does not please me.

Trouble started back in high school; my parents would often burst into my room around 7am, tired of hearing the alarm beep-beep-beeping for about an hour. My dad would usually turn on all the lights and occasionally throw my blankets off the bed. He jokingly threatened to bring in the pots and pans to wake me up, just like his father used to do with one of his sisters, my aunt.

(Note to self: does said aunt also have DSPS? Must ask!)

My first semester of college—my first time being away from home for an extended period—saw many many missed morning classes. Each weekday, except Wednesday, I had a class at 8.45am, a relatively late first class compared to some colleges. I routinely missed breakfast (I may have gone sometime within the first week of classes) and was almost always late to class.

Summer 1997 I had the perfect between-semesters job: counter-girl at a local pizza shop! The hours were 5-11pm, and I was never once late for work. I also got to eat pizza and cheesesteaks for dinner every night.

In September 1999, however, I got my first real job. In November 1999 I was fired from my first real job. “Habitual tardiness” they said. I couldn’t fight against that excuse.

In 2000 I moved back home with my parents for a while. My brother was just in second grade at the time and we had similar start times, so someone was usually around to make sure I was awake to get to work.

My husband first moved in with me in a one-bedroom apartment in late 2001 (we were married in May 2004). When I received a disciplinary notice at my job he took up the task of waking me every morning, discovering the only way to make sure I arrived at work on time was to drive him to his job!

Now that we’re separated and I don’t live with him, no one is around to wake me up when my six—yes, six—alarm clocks sound off every morning.