Short Stories: What Makes You Get Up in the Morning?

Everyone talks to themselves in their heads now and then. Don't tell me you never have- I'm onto you.

I'm not talking about full-blown conversations all day every day, or constant internal monologues: I'm talking about those moments when you do something (or don't), and a voice deep in the recesses of your mind- your voice- says something to you like 'oh, stop being so stupid.' Or something of the like. It depends on the situation. You might even mutter it under your breath to yourself.

I tend to find myself doing it most often when I'm exercising. 'Just do another five minutes and you've reached your target.' 'Don't forget to breath, idiot!' 'What are you, some kind of weakling? I said SKIP.' (I use a skipping rope to keep fit; it's a lot more hardcore than it sounds, trust me). This morning, however, I caught myself doing it to get myself out of bed when my alarm went off.

I don't usually have problems getting out of bed- it's getting fully conscious that's the issue- but the previous evening I'd done some calculations and research to find that it'll be quite a lot longer than I thought to get my own place, so I was a bit down because of that; I'd been worrying about a bunch of other things at the same time so I was down about those worries too; I dreamed about three people from my past whom I haven't thought about in a long time and will either probably or definitely never see again, which reminded me that I miss them... and to ice the cake, it was a bloody freezing morning and my bed was all nice and warm. So when the alarm went off, I mashed the off button with my first and lay there in a self-pitying stupor.

'Get up,' my brain instructed.

'No,' I said.

'Now, or you won't get any parking spaces at work,' said my brain.

'No,' I said.

'Quit being pathetic, your problems aren't problems. Get up!'

'No.'

And then my subconscious seemed to remember something crucial about me.

'You have that new apple crumble and custard cereal to try today.'

'Ooh, yum!' I got up straight away.

I could give you several answers to the question 'what makes you get up in the morning?' Apparently, this morning, it was breakfast.

~Fin~

Afterword: Seriously, this cereal has freeze-dried custard in it. Like how an astronaut might eat it. Space. Custard. How cool is that?