In the Early Morning Hours

It's not that I have to wake up early. Early as in 4:00 a.m.

It's just that my best work is done during the hours before the big yellow ball lights up my corner of the world. My best writing, my best art. My mind is clear and my body is prepared to fuel the mental and emotional energy required of the task of creating something from nothing, creating words in sentences to create paragraphs to create communication. To provoke, to inspire, to challenge, to emote. It is focused enough to create art on canvas from bits of cut paper into seahorses and octopuses and fish and happy, smiling dogs.

I tend to fade about noon. That is when I start to do the mandatory tasks of life upon working from home...dishes, floors, dogs...I paint walls, clean garbage cans, plan the evening's meal...cut coupons, do some research on art shows, dabble with website maintenance and re-construction. I walk for miles on the beach, manage the yard, run errands. All things meant to be productive and physically active, as I sit for long periods of time. I think about turns and twists and ponder on all manner of questions and answers and advice.

I go back to working on art and writing for a while, and listen to music or watch Netflix, until it's time for more physical activity, determined by the pain in my lower back from being immobile in a chair, which is disturbingly not the right height for the table, and no manner of adjustment seems to remedy it.

As the sun sets and my brain grows weary, I rest...

And as the sun prepares to rise over the horizon, I wake up at 4:00 a.m., full of intentions and thoughts and determination to make it a happy and willful day.

This morning, my thoughts were of Dr. Wayne Dyer, who passed on a couple of days ago. His books always inspired me, at least the ones he wrote in the beginning. Some of his later musings faded into an impressionistic painting, with pastels and muted colors with no definition. When I went through some very difficult emotional times, his words gave me purpose and intention and helped me to muddle through some of my anger and resentment, so that it did not come to the surface as bitterness. He was a positively necessary element in my life, and reading and re-reading many of his passages helped me to come to terms with my internal struggles.

Millions of people leaned on him, cried on his shoulder, if only in a figurative way. We all take that journey in passing, and his energy is still out there, within all of us that read his work and strived to live by inner principles that are foreign to many in this day and age. Yes, he had an ego. Yes, he lived a charmed life on a beautiful island, surrounded by the ocean and palm trees. Yes, he was a millionaire. He made no apologetic excuses for his wealth or his choices in life.

That's just it. He lived. He shared his life's wisdom. He enjoyed and reveled in his love of earthly pleasures and became a genuine icon of spreading happiness to and for others.

We should all learn from that. Better late than never.