How today begins

The thing about getting up at 4:30am is, well, that it's early. It's early and it's dark.
And it's bliss.
Because this is the time, the 4:30 - 8:30 stretch, when I get to do what I want to do because I want to do it.
Because I made the time. Carved it out of what might have been sleep-time, so that I can read and think and write. And walk the super-active dog for at least an hour.
So today begins with me sitting here, reading Cheryl Strayed's tiny beautiful things and thinking about how great she is, how inspiring, as a writer, as a speaker, as a person.
[Yes, I'm taking a little break from my Booker Prize OCD. Don't worry: I have a schedule. I have it all worked out.]
This morning I'm sitting here, remembering how cracked open I felt by Wild when I read it last year, how surprised I was by Cheryl's story, and mostly how scoured clean by her voice I was, page after page. So much aching, courageous honesty, and so much transcendence. And always, for me, this notion of our individual greatness, our potential to walk a heroic path, one blistered footstep after another, if we just want it bad enough and DO IT.
From a shattered heart, oh how much beauty we can make.
I still think it's funny that until I attended a workshop with Cheryl on June 1st of this year, I had no idea that Write Like A Motherfucker, the motto on my beloved morning-coffee mug, is actually hers, from her Dear Sugar days. She read us that essay that day, and so I can say that on top of writing well, she can also read well, which, in my experience, is not always true of writers. I still see and hear her, standing at the podium at that water-side hotel in Petaluma, book in hand, reading out:
Writing is hard for every last one of us -- straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about hard it is to mine for coal? They simply dig.
You need to do the same, dear sweet arrogant beautiful crazy talented tortured rising star glowbug. That you're so bound up in writing tells me that writing is what you're here to do. And when people are here to do that, they almost always tells us something we need to hear. I want to know what you have inside you. I want to see the contours of your second beating heart.
So write, Elissa Bassist. Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker.
During these morning hours that I have mostly to myself (even though a four-legged someone has been staring at me from his position at my feet for about an hour now, transmitting a Let's Go Already message), basically that's what I'm up to.
Reading like a motherfucker. Thinking like a motherfucker. Writing like a motherfucker.
And feeling really grateful that I can. Not just that I can, but that I DO, which is really the trick, that keeps us on the journey, step by step. It's still early, but having taken this time to do my thing, I know everything I need to know to rock this day. I know me.
We're here. Let's give it everything. Let's Go Already!
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