I’m what most people would consider an early riser. I’d be hard pressed to remember the last time I slept past 6:00. More often my days, even the ones at the end of the week, start no later than 5:30. Sometimes they start much earlier. It seems the years of well before dawn alarm ringing have exacted their penalty. I don’t mind it, though. I’ve gotten to like the early morning routine, the quiet, and general lack of people.

Much as it may sound it, this isn’t my ode to the morning. I like to think I’m more subtle than that. Instead, what I’m grappling with now is how it’s possible for me to claw out of bed at 5am on a typical Saturday, Sunday, or holiday Monday, hit the ground running, and keep myself mentally engaged until it’s time to turn the light off that night. I only wonder because on the usual weekday I spend most of that time feeling nearly comatose at worst and merely addled at best. The only discernible difference between those days and today are where I’m spending the hours.

​There’s something telling about that. Now if I didn’t have a shit ton of bills to pay I could ​probably do something about it. The more likely course of action is that I’ll just go ahead and trudge through five days a week in a situationally induced torpor and feeling like a real person on the other days.