People are a bit shocked when I tell them that I get up every day at 4am. In an industry that is known for late night coding sessions and then starting the day at 12pm, I feel like I’m a bit of an outlier for sure. But I enjoy waking up as early as I do, starting the day the way I’d like to.
I’ve never been someone who needs a lot of sleep, from as long as I can remember. On a normal day, 5-6 hours is all I really need to feel energized and refreshed for the day. Back when I was a teenager, I was also never the type to sleep in much, partially because my parents didn’t want me “sleeping the day away” but also because I felt…gross I guess, if I slept past say, 10am, even if I went to bed very late at night. In college, I would be up till 2 or so most nights, sleep and then get up and go to work or class at 8:30 and it never felt that weird or unusual for me.
Back in June, I took a quiz from the New York Times about “What’s Your Sleep Type?” and got “The Lark”, which is a definite morning person and I think that fits:
You are a rare bird who might be up between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., ready to start the day even when everyone around you is still sleeping. This is what scientists call a “definite morning” chronotype. Larks are sharpest between 6 a.m. and noon and find it difficult to concentrate in late-afternoon meetings. If it were up to you, you’d be asleep by around 9 p.m.
My current wakeup time started years ago when my daughter was an infant. She would wake up around 3:30 or so (as babies do) and after getting up to take care of her, I would find myself awake. So I started staying in this routine, even after she started sleeping through the night. I found that I enjoyed getting up when the house was quiet, taking care of quiet chores around the house, checking email and getting started on my day. I started including a workout routine into it as well and now either walk about 2.5 miles or bike 10 miles, 5 days a week, usually starting at 4:45am. I’m fortunate that in Florida I can basically do this year round, so I not only get the benefits of being awake early and enjoying the quietness of the world, but also all the good things that getting a good workout can do for you to start the day - energize you, keep you in shape and help you focus, at least for me.
The tradeoff for all of this of course, is that by 10pm I am 1000% ready for bed and try to go to sleep about that time, so evening plans can be a bit hard. And on weekends, when I can “sleep in”, I’m usually still up no later than 6, even if I go to bed much later. Thankfully the rest of the folks in the house are morning people too (including the kids), so it works out well, but no one is up as early as I am.
I imagine as I get older, and our bodies need even less sleep, this pattern might change. But there is something nice knowing that by 8am, all of the stuff around the house is taken care of, I can sit down and focus on work and have a nice productive day.
While driving to the celebration of life this past weekend, I always take state roads from Tampa to Tallahassee. Typically less chance of accidents and though you have to slow down through the small towns a bit, it’s normally pretty smooth sailing. I’ve been taking this route for 20+ years now, from when I moved to Tampa from Tallahassee and it’s interesting watching things change.
I really only make the trip a few times a year but the towns I pass through are always the same - Crystal River, Chiefland, Cross City, Perry, and some other tiny towns like Otter Creek and Usher and ones like that. Most are pretty sparsely populated, with varying degrees of signs of life and economic fortune or disaster. Some, like Crystal River, have really grown and thrived in the past 5 years or so, as more people transplant to Florida and that’s lead to a lot of growth in terms of business and economic development.
Others haven’t been so lucky. Perry is the last “city” really outside of Tallahassee when taking 19/98 and it’s been through the ringer. Until a few years ago, one of their largest economic sectors was a paper mill, and you could often see logging trucks carrying pine trees on the road next to you (not to mention smell when you were getting close to Perry…you could always smell that awful paper mill smell before you were even 20 miles away). But Perry was hit by two hurricanes in the last few years, even though they aren’t too close to water, and the devastation was drastic. Massive trees down everywhere, flooding, gas stations with their roofs torn off, the usual stuff you see on the news after a hurricane. The paper mill is gone, and so it seems most of the growth prospects for Perry. It was already a pretty poor town but the storms really drove that reality into place. In all of these towns, you see the typical fast food restaurants, but more and more small businesses have closed.
The most striking thing on these trips are the hotels and motels. Before the interstates, state roads were how most people travelled our large state, so hotels and motels and RV parks would crop up right along the state road for weary travelers. Now, in a lot of cases, these hulking relics sit empty and abandoned. Motels with motor courts and drained swimming pools, overgrown weeds and boarded up doors from kids or the unhoused breaking in to stay and/or cause havoc. Billboards talking about treatment for opiod addiction and crisis pregnancies lining the road. Some of the hotels still remain open, the ones that are closer to places people might want to go (like visiting manatees or lakes/rivers) and there are a few chains that have setup shop, but seeing these husks of buildings from a previous, hopeful time is always jarring. I’ve always wanted to just pull over and poke around, look at what remains of these places - there are many old signs for gas stations along the way too, their buildings long gone but the signs remaining, or burnt out buildings and shacks that were once…something, but their history lost to time.
This is the part of Florida a lot of people don’t usually see, away from the glitz and glamour of the tourist destinations, the old Florida that was built by the folks who moved here when it was more swamp than highway, setting up their slice of the American dream, till progress and the world passed them by. That part of the state isn’t home to many roadside attractions you might find in other places of the state, but they share the same common history and scars from a Florida that once was.
It’s unlikely that any of these towns will ever truly get bigger and better again. Their residents still seem to hope against hope though, often in ways that don’t make a lot of sense - almost all of the counties I drive through are solidly red Republican “Trump Country” and yet all of the policies of the GOP seem to be the absolute opposite of what they would need to grow. The GOP and Trump especially stands for business and growth, and yet all of these small towns aren’t even a gnat they would swat away or pay any attention to, even though their residents vote en mass for policies against their own interests, time after time.
The Florida I grew up in, a weird state of transplants and welcoming to people of all, died about 10 years ago when things turned nasty, when voters decided to vote with hate and not their heads. Sure, Florida is still weird but it’s a different kind of weird - a questioning, glaring weird that is focused on hating the outsider instead of welcoming them in to try to build something. I live in a big city, so I don’t see this as much, but passing down these long state roads, the feeling is there, evidenced in the burnt out buildings and fast food joints, the mom and pop places replaced with more corporate drop-ins, stealing the original soul of old Florida one small town at a time.
I was out of town this past weekend, for a celebration of life for my grandmother who passed away back in mid July. I grew up in Tallahassee, FL which is where she was when she passed, so it was a quick weekend trip of arriving late Friday night and getting back home mid afternoon yesterday.
At the celebration of life, my grandmother had asked that her four grandsons would speak. Two of my cousins were not able to attend, so my Uncle read their prepared remarks for them, and then my brother spoke and then I did. I’ve never had to deliver a eulogy before, and despite all of my experiences as a writer, this one was tough.
Eulogies occupy a weird space I think - you want to say nice things, but of course no one is ever perfect in their life. The goal is to share good memories and celebrate the person, but it’s hard to sometimes look past their relationships with other people. And with my grandmother there was a lot of complications with other family members. So I did the best I could, touching on the good and ignoring the bad, getting teared up more than I expected and apparently I did a good job because people complimented me afterwards.
But I’d like to think that when my time comes, if there is a eulogy or celebration of life, that people can be honest and not overlook my imperfections (the ones that we all have) and can at least acknowledge them because those imperfections are what make our relationships all the more human.
I’m glad that there were so many people for the celebration of life, and glad I was able to spend time with my family and be there for my mom and other family members, but I’m not looking forward to having to do any other eulogies any time soon.
I previously shared about my four cats, so to keep Blaugust going while I travel this weekend, I thought I should share some pictures from them at their uhh…most cat. Enjoy!
Elton John, pretending no one can see him
Blondie doing her best impression of a sleeping meer cat or whatever this is
Tina Turner, having a drink from the faucet. Seriously, this cat is obsessed with water, sinks, faucets and anything wet
Bisque, feeling how we all do knowing tomorrow is Monday
I’m out of town for the weekend for a celebration of life (more on that probably next week), so this post is coming to you from the future OOoooooOOo. Or is it from the past? I don’t know, I just scheduled it to post when I wasn’t going to be able to
In the meantime, since it’s a quick trip I packed pretty light. Sadly though, these two didn’t come with me, but they would have if they could have.
Check back tomorrow for some “funny cat pics”, as no matter how enshittified the Internet gets, everyone still seems to love a good cat pic.
Happy Caturday all!
