Me and the Morning

Every morning I awake to the beeps of a battery powered alarm clock. This vexes me. However, when the showering and the dressing and the apartment door have been locked behind me, I find myself in the car driving towards heaven… or as others call it, the gas station.

I have come to love this place since the day the college graduation tassel was packed away. (Ironically, I don’t have a college graduation tassel. I never attended my college graduation.) I spent the first month lackadaisically relaxing and then scurried around to find a job to support my adult lifestyle… alright my dwindling bank account.

I knew right away the workforce and I weren’t a good fit. I recognized this the same day the tassel was packed away. My college education satisfied my own personal curiosity and left me with little supposed value to employers despite the fact I believe a good knowledge of human behavior to be essential in this game we call life. The day my education ended, my grief commenced.

Don’t cry for me. I have proven a late bloomer in ALL areas of my life and assume career to follow perfectly in suit with what I have discovered about myself so far. I will find my niche.

Yet as an optimist, I have established a love affair with a social aspect to the workforce. The morning wake-up practice. Daily I make my way to the Mecca of others like me. The “evening” people or more importantly, the “non-morning” people gathering place. The caffeinated watering hole. The gas station though more significantly used and less frequently referenced as the convenient store.

It has taken on many names in my lifetime. 7-Eleven in my college days. Sheetz in my inaugural labor encounters. Mavrick of late. After all, I concur with the great playwright Shakespeare when he penned “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

I enjoy going there each morning. I have never awoken with any innate sense of civility in me. It’s something which has always come after an hour of open eyes, a decent beverage, and the knowledge of all around me to leave me to myself while my sluggish brain instigates the battle to once again perform.

Still, when I saunter into the store and the construction workers are buying sodas and processed meat sticks, the white collar drones purchasing coffee and newspapers, and the rest of us an energy drink and pop-tarts, against my initial morning grouchiness, I’m forced to smile. These are my people and this is my place.

This is where I wake. This is where I watch. This is where I continue to learn about the human condition in spite of that packed away graduation tassel. This is life in the real world and I can join forces with it. I fit into this.