The Trouble with Snooze Buttons

             Every single day I wake up just enough to push snooze. I roll over and I fall back asleep until the ringing begins again. Eventually I work myself up to climbing down and fumbling through the process of getting ready all while thinking “I wish I was back in bed”. I find that all day I look forward to the moment when I get to climb back into my bed and forget about my problems for several hours, or at least that’s my attempt. Sometimes I have dreams that remind me of what’s going on in reality, other times I have dreams that are nothing like real life. There are days when staying asleep is really difficult, like I can’t seem to turn my brain off, and yet still, I would rather stay in bed than get up and experience my life. It’s easier to push things to the back of my mind than face them head on. It’s easier to push snooze on my alarm than get up and face what is in front of me. It’s easier to pretend that I am fine when really all I want is to be free from doubt and my heart is begging to come alive again.

            It’s like I am on stay in bed mode all the time. I remember my freshman year of college I could hardly stand sleeping in past 8 am because it felt like I was wasting my day away. Now, I hardly manage to rub the sleep out of my eyes before 10:30 on the weekends, if I am lucky. I am constantly running a list in my mind of all the things I have to get accomplished in a given day, why would I want to get up for that? Why would I want to get up just to get to work? Where did that motivation disappear to? What happened to life being what I wanted to do rather than lying in bed? How do I get it back?

            I know that this is pretty typical. It’s not a surprise that a college student in the trudges of their junior year is exhausted and wants to sleep. I am just craving something that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning. I want something that is worth getting up early for. I want to feel alive again. It’s not just that I am tired and my body needs rest. It’s that I feel almost lifeless, or sort of wandering through everyday mundane things. I am not sleepy. I am uninterested. I am not exhausted. I am apathetic. My bed is just a place where blankets of procrastination and doubt cuddle me in that it almost feels warm. I am dissatisfied with my desire to live everyday life. I am looking forward to the day when the snooze button has no hold over me. I am looking forward to the day when staying inside with my Netflix on my lap no longer sounds better than breathing in the fresh air and admiring the world around me. I am looking forward to the day when I jump at the chance to get out of bed and accomplish something. I look forward to the day when I become interested again.

            The trouble with a snooze button is that it allows me to roll over. It allows me to ignore the things that place doubt in my heart. It allows me to skip past the things that scare me. It allows me to miss the things that are going by. I feel like I fell asleep on the first day of school and have been pushing snooze ever since. Where did my junior year go? How did I even get this far? How is it possible that in just a few short weeks I will be standing in front of a classroom teaching real students about classification of living things? That was supposed to be ages away and now it is here and gaining ground rapidly. Pretty soon I will be standing in the front of the room like a deer in headlights if I don’t find some way to be excited about this upcoming challenge. I want to want to teach these kids. I want to want to do the best job that I can possibly do. I want to want to wake up on the first alarm. I don’t want to snooze. I don’t want to let life roll by without me noticing.