On slow mornings

For a long time I woke up and immediately reached for the day — the inbox, the list, the small fires. I'd be three hours in before I'd had a single thought that was actually mine.

So this spring I started an experiment: the first hour belongs to no one.

No screens. Coffee made slowly. A notebook if I feel like it, a window if I don't. Some mornings I write; most mornings I just sit. It's almost embarrassing how much it's changed things — not productivity exactly, but the sense that the day is something I'm living rather than something happening to me.

I'm writing it down here so that when I inevitably drift back into checking my phone at 6am, I'll have a note from the version of me who knew better.