I Think I Came To The End Of The Internet

I was literally having a hard time waking up this morning, and then I came across this brilliant and apparently not ironic listicle of How Smart Parents Help Themselves Wake up in the Morning. Oh well, I thought, I’m not that smart and could certainly benefit from the wisdom of others. There must be something wonderful out there that I have not yet tried in the ongoing and terrible task of getting up day after day after day after day. And how wonderful to think that somewhere out there are some “smart parents” who have a leg up on all the rest of us. I gladly clicked the link and prepared myself to be delighted and enthralled, to have my very life transformed. Here are the five things smart parents do to wake up in the morning, in order:

Taking a Cold Shower I kid you not that was the first one.
Go for a run because apparently it will help oxygen flow to the brain but I think the writer of the list must not be very smart because I don’t know about you but for me, speaking as a regular person, I would have to wake up all the way before I would be able to do something as outlandish as running anywhere.
Drink Coffee….where is that eye-roll emoji? Does anyone in the world not know this? It seems to me that someone–the person who put together this list–has been living under a rock somewhere.
Just Go To Bed Earlier. Oh, I see, we are being trolled. This person is trolling all parents everywhere, both the dumb and the stupid. See, says the compiler of the list, if you go to bed at nine, you will get “your full 8 hours” and then everything will be fine. Sure, sure. Except that all of that is a terrible lie. For one, you can’t go to bed at 9 pm. Can you? I don’t think you can. Try, try going to bed at 9. If you do, you will lie awake for a couple of hours cursing the darkness. Or maybe you will go to sleep but you will be woken in the night by wide-ranging troubles (children, pets, age). It won’t matter whether you go to bed at 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 or midnight, you won’t get enough sleep because that’s not a thing.
And finally, and I kid you not, the last thing on the list was that, if you have trouble waking up in the morning, you could set multiple alarms. Set an alarm on every device–your phone, your alarm clock, everything. This, says the person of the list, will “increase your chances of waking up fresh.

The person concludes this way:

There are many ways to wake up in the morning and one way does not work for everyone. Try a few different ways to find your favorite. Combining different options is also a great way to start your day. The important this is doing what works for you.

Or, actually, what we may admit to ourselves is that I, by some strange and curious mysterious happenstance, have absolutely come to the end of the internet. There is no more for me to do but retire to a small hut behind my garage and sit muttering to myself about the blighted decadent tragicness of it all. Civilization is dead. We might as well not try anymore. I’m not sure how it happened, but it did, and we had better accept our corporate fate and give up. And that, if you think about it, is the most bracing way to come to consciousness in the morning. I don’t even need this vat of caffeine that I was able to come to the idea of drinking all by myself. I will go immediately into my garden and start building my little shack. Have a nice day!