The trouble with alarm clocks

When I was little, my parents woke me up. It was a bad thing and a good thing. A bad thing because if I didn't when called it would often devolve into getting poked and prodded. But a very fortunate thing because I always woke up.

As an adult, I beacame responsible for waking myself up and starting using alarms. This was when I discovered a weird fact about myself. An alarm will only work for so long. When I hear a sound long enough, I stop noticing it. After a while of the same alarm, I stop waking up.

There were 2 solutions I could think of. I could find a sound so annoying or startling that it would continue to wake me up. I tried that for a while. I woke up. But I'd be in a bad mood half the morning. The second solution was to keep changing alarm tone. These days I use my cellphone, and I change the song the alarm plays every few months.

My whole life is like this. I can stick with something for a while, although it drives me crazy. But in time, I need to reach for a new something.  Nothing is forever in my world. That's why I switch jobs the way I do. Why I love travelling and living in other countries. Why my dream changes with the wind direction.

Sometimes I love the way that this allows me to live outside the box. Other days, I despise the way it means being a "Jack of all trades, master of none." That, I guess, is the trouble with alarm clocks.