Fuck Yeah Early-Early Wake-Up Time: i missed you

For a whole host of reasons, I spent the first 6 months of this year sleeping past my beloved Fuck Yeah Early-Early Wake-Up Time of 4:30 am.  OK, so I was still getting up at 5:30, so it's not like I wasn't still getting an early start.

But I wasn't happy. 

Somehow I had something bound up in this notion of getting up at 4:30.

And as June turned to July and I started my mid-year review last week, I realized I'd never move forward enough on my goals, I'd never be 100% happy, unless I resumed my radical early bird ways.  

Here's the thing: in my head two notions -- the early bird and the bluebird of happiness -- make one: the early bluebird of happiness.

Western bluebird, credit: www.allaboutbirds.orgThe FYEE is, apparently, core to my happiness -- it's the means to moving forward on my plans, to writing every day, to getting enough shit done that I can also have the leisure to sit on my ass with a book in some peace and quiet and read. 

Because let's face it: bottom line, I'm always striving toward that particular moment, that moment when I can shut everything and everyone else off, open a book and go.

So since July 1st, I'm back in the saddle. My little alarm is going off weekdays at 4:30, weekends at 5:30. Sure, it wreaks its bit of havoc when it comes to a social life, since everyone seems to be ramping up just as I'm craving bed and sleep.  And the late light of summer nights is tricky, too. I can't go to bed if the sky's not even dark, can I? [Yes, actually, I so can.]

But already on Day 3 of the glorious month of July, I'm feeling so much more at peace, having this one solitary hour before the house is awake, before the talking begins, time for me and my thoughts, to set the foundation for each day.  I realize this solitary time is about more than just my precious Getting Shit Done. It's actually much more than that.

It's funny, or maybe just weird, but this, the FYEE, maybe more than anything else, is what I need to really be Me, to fully inhabit the person that I am.

It's as if in this magic hour in which I am responsible only for myself, accountable only to me, I get grounded in my own self (goofy as it sounds) in a way that makes that groundedness unshakable. I stand firmly in the reality of my own identity. When I fall out of this habit, then slowly it erodes, this centeredness. It gets replaced by the usual fare of my day -- so much in service to, in relationship with, in conversation. All of which is well and good, but in all of that hullaballoo I can't hear the pulsing quiet signal of my own me.

Dear FYEE, I missed you. Welcome back.

Right now I'm so glad.  OK, I'm a little bit tired, I admit it, but mostly I just feel good, like I've made my way back to someplace essential, to this little perch when I can hear my own voice clearly, where the answer to "Can you hear me now?" is "Yes, Yes, Yes!"

Do whatever you need to do to make sure you can hear your own voice. Clear the ruckus, carve out some space, get back to you. Kick ass and make your own dreams come true.

XX