Okay so I wake up at 5AM every day and before you roll your eyes — no, I am not one of those people who does it to feel superior about it. I just genuinely love the quiet. Like the world hasn't started being loud yet and for a little while it's just mine.
First thing I do? I spend time with God. Bible, prayers, just talking honestly about whatever is on my mind. I know some people have very elaborate morning routines they post about online — mine is just this. And it works. The days I skip it I feel it. Like something is missing and I can't quite name it but it's there, that off feeling I can't shake all day.
Then I get ready for work. Nothing dramatic. Just the usual — shower, get dressed, grab my things. But I do it deliberately, you know? Like I actually care about showing up properly. Because I do.
PICTURE TAKEN FROM PHOTOS
Now here is the part I genuinely look forward to every single morning.
There is this bridge on my way to work. And I don't care how many times I cross it — it gets me every time. The river underneath catches the sun in a way that's almost ridiculous honestly. Like who told the water to do that? The light just hits it and suddenly everything is gold and moving and alive and I'm just there squished in a bus thinking wow, what a beautiful creation.
And it's not even just the bridge honestly. It's the whole sight of it — God's creation just doing what it does, completely unbothered. Some mornings it's raining and I'm sitting in that bus grateful for the rain because I know what comes after. The sun shows up and I'm like Lord thank you. Just like that my whole mood shifts. Whatever I woke up carrying loosens. I arrive at work lighter than I left home every single time.
Work is from whenever I arrive until 5PM and I actually enjoy it. I know that's not a popular thing to say but it's true. I just get into it and before I know it it's 5PM. There's something really satisfying about doing your work properly and closing your laptop at the end of the day knowing you actually showed up for it.
And lately I've been very intentional about my space — what I watch, what I read, what I let take up space in my head at night. Because what's the point of a good morning if you waste your night.
So I've been protective of that time.
Which is how I finally — finally — cracked open The Richest Man in Babylon. Listen, if PDFs could be covered in cobwebs mine absolutely was. It had been sitting in my phone storage so long I forgot I downloaded it. But I opened it. And honestly I should have done it sooner — why did nobody physically hand me this book earlier. Every page is hitting different and I'm sitting there like — okay so I've been doing this wrong.
Nobody is going to give me an award for this and I'm fine with that.
It's a simple life. But it's mine and it's full and most days that feels like more than enough.