Day to Day

Need filler. Rather than resort to obligatory post about needing filler and having nothing, I'll instead sketch out an average day, and insert my own commentary on my own actions.

All times are eastern standard, unless otherwise noted.

0200 - Wake up for the first time, only to fall promptly back asleep. I have no problem falling asleep. It's the staying there that gets me.

0430 - Wake up for the second time, stay in bed awake, eyes closed. Sometimes it's nice to remain in that indistinct half-awake world, lost in my slow, meandering thoughts. Yeah, it's sacrilegious to even be up this early, but if I have a little time to myself, and a lot of time to prepare for the work day, it goes much smoother than if I'm rushed.

0500 - Get out of bed. The bed here is still the futon. The actual bed is still in the box from Ikea, having only been procured a couple of days ago.

0505 - Morning bathroom regimen. Toilet, floss, brush teeth, mouthwash. If my glasses are in the bathroom, I put them on. Otherwise, I stumble around half-blind. Often, my glasses end up in the strangest places, though not in the freezer (yet).

0530 - Attempt to exercise. If it's really cold, or the allergy-induced asthma rises from within like the spirit of vengeance, then I stay inside and do push-ups and sit-ups. If I feel crazy, I go for a run in what is essentially the midnight hour. This requires an added level of caution, as I often cannot see the road, and cars cannot see me.

0600 - Breakfast. Honey Bunches of Oats, frozen berry mix (blue, rasp, and black), and soy milk. Every morning. I read in an issue of Wired magazine that, in terms of happiness, eating a wide variety of food is not as important as eating what you like over and over. The berries freeze my teeth when I crunch through them, but it helps put me at ease, and gives me another familiar sensation.

0615 - Shower. I'm naked.

0630 - Contacts and get dressed. Contacts are fun. I can't open my eyes wide enough some mornings to get the contacts in. They'll catch the edges of my eyelashes and get stuck against my eyeballs, and burn like caustic acid. Plus, I'm poking my eyes. As for getting dressed, black pants, button down shirt, black belt, black socks. Not that hard to match my shirts against the same color pants every day, so it really doesn't matter if I dress in the dark, which I do some mornings.

0700 - Drive to work. What I wouldn't pay for even a tape deck. I hate listening to talk radio in the morning. Just give me a song!

0730 - Commence working. As much as people mock me for getting in this early, and living an early bird schedule, there is something nice about getting into an empty office and getting work done without distractions.

1300 - Lunch. Long morning and late lunch means I don't have to spend that much time in the office after lunch, when I'm sleepy from eating, and having been awake since 0500.

1630 - Cease working and drive home. I put in my eight hours, and I get out. If there's an emergency, I'll stay longer. However, we were discussing an average day.

1700 - Dinner. Yeah, I eat dinner at five in the afternoon. I am an old, decrepit man. If I'm really tired, it's more cereal. If I'm not, it's brown rice plus whatever I cooked in bulk on Sunday.

1730 - Decompression. This usually involves writing in some fashion, but can also include a run, reading, or staring quietly at the wall and meditating on the nature of existence.

1800 - TCB. This is catch-all time. Internet/email, cleaning the apartment, running assorted errands, making an infrequent phone call. If I were to take up smoking crack cocaine, it would probably happen here.

2100 - Sleeping. Fairly self-explanatory.

Looking back at how I live an average day, it looks like my most vivid sensations, or at least the parts I'm most willing to recall, are the moments in the early morning before work, when the rest of the world is sleeping. Could it be that I really am an early bird?