new decade's resolutions

I have become a morning person.
Since last summer, I wake up no later than 6:30 and start my day around 8 with my coffee and my computer. I go home by 6 pm or earlier to enjoy the rest of day ... which lasts until 11.
I thought my life had gone hell.
I thought I had become a morning person.

In graduate school, when the school work was not crazy, I stayed up no later than 1 am during the week and partied no later than 3 am during the weekend. My day usually started at 9 or 10 am.
During the last year of my Pennsylvanian life, I woke up at 7:30 am every day, worked until 5-ish, practiced yoga until 7-ish, had dinner, and worked until midnight. I still partied hard during the weekend.
However, I did not like staying up later than 4 or 5am because I would fail to fall asleep or sleep long enough ... it turned out that I always opened my eyes around 10am. What a misfortune.

In college years, I never stayed up for studying because my brain was not working after midnight. I woke up 8-ish... not quite sure, but never too late to miss a class or miss breakfast before noon.

In high school years, I woke up at 5:30, left home around 6 so that I was able to arrive at school before 7:30 for my duty as the leader of the marching band.... what a stupid job now I think of it. No wonder I hated those years.

In junior high, I don't quite remember, but I know we had a test or two every morning before the first class. I never missed a test or a breakfast before the test... so I must have left home for school before 7 am.

In elemental school..... I really have no memory. However, considering that I went to bed at 9 pm every day, I must have got up early in the morning.

By all means, I never became a morning person. I have always been a morning person. I just cannot wake up early for a jog or an early-bird yoga class. But I do wake up early for having breakfast, reading, working, and chatting online with people physically far far away from me. Also, breakfast is important because I like it.

Yesterday was a snow day. I knew it would be a snow day, and I watched a 3-hour movie late and read a chapter of Harry Potter until 1am. And I got up at 8:30 on the snow day and worked until dinner time.
See the pattern? If there were no pleasure at all in what I have been doing, I should have made a whole different career than being a "research scientist".

Today my two bosses said something very meaningful to me. They did not say those things for complimenting my work. They did not announce a title onto me. They did not raise my salary. They probably did not know the meanngfulness of their words. They were just being themselves, my boss and mentor and all.
And then I felt it, the point of why I live my life in this pattern.

You don't understand it. You don't think about it. You don't plan on it. You feel it. It being the way of your life and possibly the meaning of your life.

Somehow my way of living fits the current society, and thus I live without anyone telling me that I should do otherwise. I don't work like an attending physician or hedge-fund analyst who seems to work too hard too often. I don't work like an actor or a dance teacher who seems to work for too little to survive.
So I think I am totally lucky. Also the fact that I live far away enough from people who may like to nag on my behavior is totally a bonus to my continuous obsession of getting up early to have a breakfast and read for work or pleasure.

So what is it? What is the point?
Sometimes, you feel you have to make a plan and make wise decisions to follow the plan so that you know you are on track to your goal. But I have made it to my goal three years ago: I got my degree.
Then I was lost in the most unremarkable life: looking for a job and looking for a way of living that was supposed to make me happy. I was depressed and lonely. I didn't know what defined my career. I didn't like my job. I felt like I was forced to be on this track to a pointless unexciting academia nerdy boring life, hanging out with uninteresting people who also lived uninteresting lives. At some point, I just wanted to be out. Out of everything. I wished I could just leave and drive until the car dies.

A title is not a career. Being a professor, a writer, a business manager, a dancer or a chef is not a career. A career has to be what a professor, a writer, a business manager, a dancer, or a chef is passionate about for at least five years to life time. A researcher means nothing. Someone told me that she wanted to do research and asked for my guidance. I was like... what? Please re-define your question. Research on what? And why?

Today I found it. Or felt it. Can't put an explicit word for it. But I felt it. The it that may define my career. I am gonna make a wish.
I wish I will truly accomplish something that changes a small part of the world. I don't fancy being rich. I do fancy being someone who does at least one good important thing for many people who really need it. And this one thing is good and important enough that I will be proud of myself when I'm about to leave the field to start a new career.

Two days ago was the 30th anniversary of my first step. Here are two goals for my next decade of walking on earth.
One: Remain excited about my research on cognitive neuropsychology and related rehabilitative techniques, and get proud!
Two: Leave it with pride, and start something entirely different and exciting!
Now I feel the purpose of being a morning person. I have a career, not a job. Pretty cool kind of feeling indeed.