I am a morning person.  I am perky and chatty and happy in the morning.  But when my alarm went of this morning, I whined, “I don’t wanna.”  There was a chill in the air.  I was warm in bed and I didn’t want to get up and get into a cold shower.  It seemed like torture.  Why was I doing this to myself?
I still couldn’t set the dial all the way to cold (or even as far as I’d gotten it the day before), so I started in the middle again and worked back to colder and colder water, not even getting as far as the day before.  I didn’t wash my hair.  I was in and out in three minutes or less.  And I wasn’t as happy and invigorated as the day before.  I was just cold.  I towel dried and then turned a hair dryer on my entire body.
At which point Matt perked up from the toasty, warm bed.  “That wasn’t that long and I bet it wasn’t that cold.”  Matt is not a morning person, but out came his competitive spirit.  He was up and out of bed before 6:30 (a near impossibility) and in a freezing shower, with the shower head pointing right on him.  I had turned it away so that I could keep most of my body out of the shower.  He came out ten minutes later, quite proud and quite cold.  I was not impressed.  Okay, I was a little, but I wasn’t envious.
Something in my gut said this was good too, but it felt so bad.
This was the day that I started sharing this adventure with my classes during plank.  Everyone wanted to know why I was doing it and I really didn’t have any answers (see Monday’s blog for what I discovered).  I wrote my friend who had given me the boost to try this experiment and told him that we should text each other in the morning and play chicken.  Each get in the shower and see who can last the longest.
I’d gone back to one of the blogs that had inspired my friend to try this and reread it. It was all about how taking a cold shower helps you overcome your fear because you are afraid of the cold, but after a month of doing it you have conquered your fear and feel proud.  WHAT!?!?  That’s ridiculous.  I have enough to be afraid of.  I’m not currently afraid of my shower.  Why would I want to make myself afraid of the shower?  And besides, it’s not that I’m afraid of the cold water.  I don’t think it’s going to harm me.  It’s just so unpleasant that I don’t want to do it. 
Still I’m charging ahead mostly on instinct and the websites I found the other day.
Personal Euphoria