But this I do well.
La vida has shut down this week but for two things: work and sleep.
The rest of the day is a haze in which I just wish I were asleep: tandem pounding just behind eyes and above the base of my skull. My best hours go to my job.

This is good. If my work hours were not my best hours, there would be high hell to pay. See, I’m filling in for our morning person this week at Small Publication, which means I go to work at 3:30 in the morning. Which means I get up at three. Which is completely insane. When I shot three years or so of my life down the tubes working at a coffeeshop here in town, I got up at 5:30 on many days. Now 5:30 feels late. 5:30 feels like an hour of luxury. I have grey hairs at 28. My sisters didn’t; nor did my mother. I wonder if I get a new one for every hour of sleep I rob from myself in my twenties.

There’s something else too, though; something more. The hour I get up, I am without the usual a.m. comforts: No sun, no Renee Montagne on the radio and no other people on the roads. I get out of bed, make the coffee, wash my face, dress & go, and by the time I get to work, I’m alert enough that I’m yelling back at the prerecorded talk radio I listen to on my drive in; I’m making insane jokes for me, only. There is no one else at the office; what I’m in charge of there is mine, too. I feel like it’s Time to Make the Doughnuts but I feel those doughnuts fricking matter. There’s a heft to my hand as I hoist up the morning papers on the stoop of the office and swing open the door. Take my five good hours.