María Ortega García
María Ortega García is a passionate native Spanish tutor from northern Spain, currently teaching Spanish online as she travels across Australia, and the world.
What is your morning routine?
I don’t have one. The fact that I am often traveling makes it pretty difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. However, I still have a “kind of” routine.
I’m not a morning person. Visualise a slug? That’s pretty much me in the mornings (the slowness, not in the sliminess)…
It takes me a long while and large amounts of coffee to emerge into the world of the living. Having said that, I also dislike deeply to waste my mornings. As I want to make the most of my days, sleeping, although a very pleasurable and healthy habit and necessity, is considered by me as not living… a bit extreme? Maybe, but I try to stay in the healthy side by sleeping no less than five or six hours.
I don’t normally use alarms, instead I leave my body to decide when it’s time for him to start the day. Under normal circumstances I wake up around 8:30 or 9:00am naturally. And I highlight the “under normal circumstances” because at the moment I’m living Down Under, thus my morning routine is completely upside down too!
What time do you go to sleep?
I am quite a night owl, so I won’t be able to sleep before midnight or 1:00am because that’s generally when I am more active and inspired. Don’t ask my brain for much activity in the morning, but it’s eager to do so from 8-9:00pm onwards.
I am all energy and activity in the evenings, ready to be productive. The ideas and inspiration keep coming even when I have turned off the light. It’s not unusual for me to have to note down some ideas that pop into my head when I am already eyes closed, ready to sleep. Notebook and iPad are always handy in case of the not so unusual awesome idea deciding to manifest itself in the middle of the night.
How soon after waking up do you have breakfast, and what do you typically have?
The time it takes to go from the bed to the kitchen, and the coffee to brew.
I like to have breakfast with my coffee. Not much food though, a slice of toast with olive oil or a couple of digestive biscuits keeps me happy and going until lunch.
How soon do you check your phone in the morning, either for calls/messages or social media and news?
The guilt consumes me, but I do I check my phone even before I am completely awake.
I have a look at the Facebook and Twitter notifications and updates with one eye, while I am still sleeping with the other. Little by little, notification after notification, update after update, and twit after twit, I eventually wake up fully and leave the bed and the phone on the bedside table.
What are your most important tasks in the morning?
The main task for me is making coffee, which is close to a ceremony, the rite of passage that brings me to consciousness. Having my coffee in one hand while holding a book in the other are the two major tasks in my mornings.
Lacking that, I will be a grumpy being for the day.
On days you’re not settled in your home, are you able to adapt your routine to fit in with a different environment?
As I said before, I am now in a different environment and although sometimes it’s difficult and hard to work at night instead of during the day, I can adapt my routine easily because I don’t have a strict routine. It all flows.
My bed time is quite chaotic these days. I am living in Australia at the moment which means that I am a minimum of ten hours ahead my students, often more. So, I usually start working in the afternoons and continue during the nights, finishing work at 6:00am or coming in and out of bed in between classes. So much for a sleeping pattern huh?
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