I'm not really a morning person, which seems somewhat odd to hear for people who know that I routinely get up at 5AM every day with few exceptions.
As a kid I was always someone who loved to stay up late. Pretty much every Friday and Saturday night was spent drawing comics and working on various creative projects until sunrise. My mom would often ask me when she saw me in the morning "Are you up early or up late?" and the answer was always the latter. It never felt like enough time, though. I always needed more time to get things done. When I was in college, I had a writing teacher who told us "You will never have more time in your life to do things than you do now." and in the moment that seemed so unbelievable to comprehend, because I was so eager to be done with school so that I'd finally have more time to myself!
But she was right. It feels like every year that passes by, ten more things get added to my to-do list, the list of things I CAN get done in a day gets cut in half, and somehow an entire hour is removed from the clock. The thought of staying up until 1AM makes me blanche, let alone staying up until the sunrise like I would do so effortlessly as a kid. (28 hours was my record, if I recall.)
By the time I'm done with work, there's dinner. Then dishes. The dog needs walking. The cats need feeding. The litterbox needs changing. The laundry, endless laundry. The house is dirty again. The garbage and recycling needs to be taken out. My wonderful husband deserves time with me. It all amounts to a tiny, tiny sliver of time when I am both conscious and not-doing-anything where I can get something done.
And that something usually amounts to watching three youtube videos on the couch before getting back to work.

It makes me sad sometimes when I look back on my creative projects. Comics take so much time for so little reward. I once was able to get 1 page drawn per day, every day, and update 2-3 webcomics multiple times every week without fail for three years in college. I don't even know when the last time I had the time and energy to even open my drawing tablet rcently. More and more I start to think of my time as an artist and storyteller as a "I was" instead of an "I am".
And if we ever are fortunate enough to have a kid, I'm never going to have a moment of free time ever again. That'd be something I have to consciously accept and be ready for.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this line of thought. But every morning I set five alarms on my phone to get up at 5am to take the dog on the walk. I'll try my best to get as much things out of the way around the house before I need to go to work. If I'm lucky, I'll have about 45 minutes to draw or write after that. If not, then hopefully it will have been enough taken care of that I can get those 45 minutes to myself after work instead.
Except for today, today I chose to type all of this out instead.