It's Official

I've seen more sunrises in the past month than I have in my entire lifetime.

I don't know how it happened, nor am I happy it did, but I've become an early riser.

There was a time when I'd be beckoned from my slumber by the insistent call of a nocturnal bladder. I'd get up, stumble to the bathroom, do my business, leave the seat up, go back to bed and within 30 seconds I'd return to deep REM sleep and dreamy visions of Kate Upton and Charlotte McKinney, hot oil wrestling for my attention and the opportunity to stick their tongue in my now-hairy ears.

Those days are gone.

Now I find myself lying in bed, hyper-oxygenating and working feverishly to turn my brain off. Hoping beyond hope that the digital clock now flashing a 4 or 5 will magically become a 7 or an 8.

But, like my wish that common sense would return to the corporate boardroom, it's just not happening.

And so I find myself, as my wife often finds me, back at the computer. Working. And writing. If I may borrow a line from an old US Army commercial, "I've written more by 9 AM than most millineal copyfolks write in a month." 

By the time I get to the office, I've already downed a pot of coffee and have to switch over to decaf lest I find myself volunteering to help the IT guy rewire the HTML UNIX-Based server confibulators.

Apart from my wife's objections, who used to enjoy the quiet hours of the morning all to herself, getting up early is not the worst thing in the world. Though not apparent from this piece, I feel the writing I do in the morning is better than the writing I do later in the day.

My head is clear. The synapses fire cleaner and more efficiently. And I'm not trying to sort through the endless string of comments, notes and critiques of people who don't write but love to pull on the puppet strings of those who do.

The professional vernacular for this is "feedback." Which, if you were to break down in etymological terms, is suspiciously close to vomit.

This is all good news for agencies or clients that hire me, because I'm now working more time on your behalf than ever before. If I start work at 5 AM and leave the office at 6 PM, minus the time for my afternoon swim, I've already put in a good dozen hours. So I'm not really interested in taking any guff from folks who wear their all-nighter adventures like some stupid badge of honor.

"Banker's hours, Rich?"

"No, doughnut-makers hours wise guy. Good night."