I've Come Out.

No really, I have.

It's odd and wonderful when you learn something totally unexpected and interesting about yourself by accident.

On the weekend, we met a friend of our newest friends for the first time. A fab individual with a typically Californian (so I'm told) attitude to life and typically Californian (same) friendliness. Now I don't want this to come across as creepy, writing a blog about someone I've only met recently and only twice ever, but he taught me something about myself.

You see, he's a night owl. A proper one. He doesn't like to "walk with the day people" if he can help it, he works and plays at night in his non conventional profession and he's totally unashamed about it.

And quite rightly so! Why on earth should he be apologetic about it? It's his choice.

So why is it that I've found it so difficult to realise that actually, I'm the same.

Since working a load of permanent night shifts, if I've ever had a conversation about that with you, you'll know that I love night shifts and hate day shifts. I only now work in the evening/night apart from four afternoons and two tiny morning shifts a month, and those two kill me. I hate mornings. Well strictly, that's not true. I LOVE mornings - when I haven't got to bed yet.

My friends know that after our extreme dinner parties that go on 'till the wee small hours, I stay up and clean up in the dead of night and I love it.

But I've resisted this declaration all my life. I've NEVER been any good at mornings, I'm always racing through the door two minutes past my start time, sleeping through my alarm, I honestly find getting up in the morning to be physically painful, but instead of embracing what I find natural, I've tried to force myself into conforming to other people's norms. Now that my teenager is in her last year of school and I have a lovely husband who is a morning person, I don't have to do a lot of it, but I still try to shoe-horn-and-vaseline myself into someone else's pidgeon hole.

My name's Bethan and I'm a NIGHT OWL. I feel liberated! (and don't ring me in the morning!)