Yesterday, I talked about how I am dancing it out to music as a way to get in better shape again. Believe me, I need it.

Something else that I wanted to do something about concerns the changing seasons. It’s so much harder to get up when it’s still dark and my alarm often wakes me rather roughly. After I switch it off, I sometimes even fall asleep again whereas I was often up before 6am in the summer, without alarm.

What I used to do in the past is use a floor lamp on a timer to start waking me up. It’s much gentler and the light bulb I used for that is an energy-saving bulb that starts up slowly and spreads a warm glow. That likely makes it an older CFL (compact fluorescent light bulb). It certainly is pretty old.

So I went looking for a timer. I had two mechanical timers, one of which was broken (a spring in it seems to have snapped, but I am unable to open it), but I don’t like the noise that these mechanical timers make. I had a digital one too. Those are more complicated to program, but I managed.

The floor lamp that I want to use it with, in which I replaced the switch a long time ago with the aid of Wilko (because what it came with was rather clumsy), seemed to have developed a problem. Or maybe it is the bulb. Not sure yet. It started giving off a loud buzz, but only after a while (which makes it likely that the bulb is the problem).

Could also be that something was a little too loose in the lamp; it has a flexible “snake top” so it gets fiddled with.

So I took the lamp apart because it could do with a clean, did encounter a component that surprised me by falling out right away and that could have been the cause of the buzz (part of the bayonet fitting), gave it all a good clean and will do the final bit of reassembly later. I want the metal shade to dry well first. If in doubt, I will stop using this floor lamp, of course.

I will also test the bulb in that case, to make sure that it is not the source of the buzz after all. Bulbs can certainly buzz too and this bulb, like I said, is pretty old but still trucking. It could be telling me that it’s reached the end of its life or that, because it’s old, it’s not fully compatible with the newer digital timer.

What also helps a lot with getting up when the mornings are darker is… daylight bulbs! Get yourself a daylight bulb and switch that on after you’ve woken up. It helps kick-start your adrenaline serotonin cycle into adrenaline mode.