The Morning Cut-in

It's piercing. I would bet it's one of the loudest alarms I could buy. Standing at the end of my block, you could still hear the most annoying, obnoxious sound on earth penetrating through my open window. It's that damn loud. But I still roll over slowly, and through the greasy haze of the middle of the night I glance at the clock. It's way too early. People should not wake up this early. It reads 2:30 AM.

My head is pounding like a hard night of drinking, thrown into a cocktail shaker with a migraine headache, but I didn't have anything to drink last night. It's just that early.

"It's OK," I say to myself, "I'll hit snooze, fall back to sleep for 15 minutes." I rationalize it to myself. "I should call out sick," the angry, groggy voice in my mind tells me, even though that makes no sense, being that it's an hour before my shift. The next thing I know it's 15 minutes later and the hell-arm goes off again.

I drag my arms under my chest, and in a pathetic display of weakness I do a half push up. It's like my arms say get up, my body says not a chance.

I roll my self out of bed and into a shower, standing there, water pouring through my hair, blankly staring at the wall like a kid watching voltron on a Saturday morning. Twenty minutes later I snap out of it, dry off, get dressed and pour myself into a bowl of honey nut cheerios. I feel like the heroin addict. I finally get that first cup of coffee which barely helps. I don't really wake up until my first live shot at 5 in the morning, the time when everyone else in the world is doing what I did three and half hours ago. At least I'm done, I've hit the gym and I'm at happy hour as the evening shift starts work. That's the life of the morning shift.