When You're the Only Early Riser in the House, What Do You Do?

Answer: Get used to it because the situation's not likely to change. It can be very frustrating being an early bird in your family when everybody else in the household firmly believes that weekends, holidays and vacations are designated special for those who enjoy to sleep in.

I'm naturally an early riser and for anybody else who shares my predicament, you know how unnerving this can be at times. Weekends aren't so bad as the early quiet hours (and I mean several hours sometimes) provides a time for peaceful solitude. I am devout in my Christian faith, so this is a good devotional time, a time to peacefully soak in the Word of God, and reflect in prayerful meditation. This is also a good time to do some quiet exercising such as stretching, pushups, and core strengthening routines. I've also taken advantage of these early quiet hours, when everybody else is sawing logs, to read a book uninterruptedly. What often happens is I find myself pulled, almost supernaturally, to my laptop. This can often be a regretful choice as it's easy to get caught up in work stuff, Facebook, sensationalized news stories and videos, and worst of all, celebrity nonsense. I couldn't care less about Prince Harry's latest expos`e...but yet we are somehow drawn...

This time can be a real gift if used productively. For example, I'm taking this opportunity at this time to create a blog post. The trick is always to sneak out of the bed as stealth-like as possible, quickly take care of your hygiene needs, make as much coffee as is required to get you through these hours, quietly clean up any remnants of the previous evening's activities. This can often be a challenging proposition as it often requires some degree of thumping and bumping about, which often leads, at least in my case, to swift and grouchy retribution from a too-early awakening of my sweetly-snoozing spouse (kids generally don't care).

Sleeping in on the weekends, I can abide to some extent. It's the time when we're away from home on vacation that really irks me. And all you can do as an early bird is suffer in silence. I fully understand that vacations are for rest, but geez! I want to rise with the birds, get a light breakfast, plan the day's activities and explore new things. Hotel rooms are particularly tricky as you are confined to a smaller space, those iron curtains drawn taught, lest the tiniest ray of morning sunlight breech the crypt-like sanctity of the space. Once expertly navigating through the foreign territory in the pitch dark, executing a modified version of the hygiene regimen and grabbing the essentials: cell phone, camera, room and car keys, I've had the most wonderful adventures, left to my own devices. Hint: skip the mini-coffee maker and lobby coffee. The quest for a good quality cup of real (preferably Fair Trade) coffee is a great way to begin exploring a new area. It's amazing the wildlife you can view, the interesting people you can meet, and the discoveries that can be realized, given this precious time alone.

Sometimes, my wife and kids will be pondering the notion of breakfast by the time I'm thinking about lunch and a cold locally-crafted pint. All you can do if you're an early bird is accept that this is the way it will be and stop getting frustrated that everybody else doesn't share the same need to wake with the sun. To me sleeping in is like letting the whole world go on without you. I always feel as though I'm missing out on something. And mostly I'm right.

There is, of course, a flip side to this compulsion to greeting the day at it's dawning. When the rest of my family is ready to settle in for a good movie in the evening, I can quickly leave them for a different kind of solitude...as sleep comes on me quickly in these twilight of my years...   

One bad decision deserves another

Did ya ever notice that when you make a poor choice it often is followed up by a series of bad occurrences?  That upon reflection, if you simply went with your gut instinct things could have been radically different?  One of the tenets of present moment awareness is that it affords you to tap into your inner guidance.  Apparently I tap into it and spit in its face.  Let me tell you about Thursday's commute.

I am quite easily distracted.  Doesn't matter what it is, it'll distract me.  Could be a bug, a piece of paper on the floor, just the sound of the wind whistling through my sometimes vacant head.....On Thursday something minor distracted me and had me leaving the house slightly late. As I ran to the car, I noticed the sky was threatening rain which caused me to run back into the house and grab the first umbrella I saw.  Run back out to the car, started up the Blue Flame and sped through traffic in a panic not wanting to miss my train.  My tires screeched as I pulled into a parking space, grabbed my coffee and heavy backpack (which got caught on the gear shift causing some coffee spillage, argh!) and ran for the train....to find out that it was running 10-15 minutes late.

The first rule of commuting by train is "Get on whatever damn train pulls into the station if trains are running late".  I know this, I feel this, I understand this, I just didn't do this.(Bad decision #1)  When I got to the station, the train that runs before my normal train was in the station.  I chose not to take it as it appeared crowded and also because I apparently had lost my mind.......sky is now really threatening.  10 minutes go by, my normal train pulls into the station.  Hop on, All goes well, (I'm monitoring the skies as we glide along) we pull into the downtown depot.  I need to make a decision on the rest of my commute...Walk as I usually do?  Take a bus? Take a water taxi? What ho!  A bus is waiting for me when I hit the sidewalk.  Bus it is!! (Bad decision #2) I'm all settled in my seat for my 10 minute commute to my office....10 minutes later...I'm still settled in my seat...in traffic.  Sky is really threatening but I don't care cause I'm safe and dry on the bus....in traffic.  We get to the entrance to lower Wacker to find it is blocked off by our vigilant ladies in blue, Chicago cops. (Thank you Chicago for having a city so great people want to film movies here and do it during rush hour commutes) Our bus driver says to the cop "Hey, I need to turn here, I don't have another route".  The cop says "Hey you can't, we told the cta (Chicago Transit Authority)" Bus driver says "I'm the CTA and you didn't tell me NUTHING!". They continue to fight while the rest of us exit the bus (not knowing when the bus would move) (Bad decision #3).  I start to walk.  I get about 10 minutes from the office and the skies make good on their threat.  It as a blistery blowy wind. I open my umbrella and of course it is broken so I have only 1/2 an umbrella. I swear and walk, swear and walk, etc..... Finally get to work, completely soaked.

As I try to dry out EVERYTHING I realize....
A... If I had taken the train that was in the station when I got there I would have missed the rain and been dry
B... If I had walked or taken the water taxi I would have missed the rain and been dry
C... If I had stayed on the bus, I would have arrived at the same time and not gotten wet (a coworker who was on the bus after me said that they opened the entrance ramp about 5 minutes after I left my bus) and been dry.

The moral to the story? Well I guess to go with my gut but I think truly the moral is don't trust MY judgement when the skies threaten rain!

Martin Eden Film Coming Soon!

Well as of this writing, this headline isn’t quite yet true—it’s more of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It is true that there is an excellent screenplay adaptation of Jack London’s 1909 novel slowly getting some positive attention in Hollywood and New York.  Martin Eden is a great story that mirrors much of London’s own life and times as an uneducated sailor, turned famous writer.  For many years I thought that somebody should’ve made this great novel into a film.  Now that somebody has finally written a very good…No, great screenplay exactly 100 years since the novel was published, I think the time is ripe to bring this story to life on the big screen. How do I know the screenplay is great?  Well, speaking objectively, this script has placed in 4 major screenwriting competitions.  Martin Eden took 2^nd place in the Inkwell Opportunity 2009 screenwriting competition, as well as being judged a finalist in Scriptapalooza, Fresh Voices and Sundance Film Festival’s top 100 in the Table Read My Screenplay competition.

The story is about love, obsession, ambition, social issues, self-improvement, sacrifice, success, charity, disillusionment and deep depression.  This story interweaves all of the elements that touch every human soul in one way or another. The story of Martin Eden is set in San Francisco in the early 1900’s.  This was a time when class distinction was most prevalent in American society—the bourgeois wealthy, whom chased to great extent, the Victorian affectations, and the oppressed working class, where the sparks of rebellion were quickly being fanned-to-flame. Eden is a young uneducated and impoverished sailor from the latter class, who gets a taste of the seemingly better life of the wealthy. It all begins when he falls hopelessly in love with Ruth Morse, a young socialite who embodies everything the wealthy upper class can afford.  Eden makes his decision to abandon the life of the sea, educate himself, learn proper etiquette, dress the part of a man of distinction and become a published writer.   

Eden’s relentless pursuit of this goal for the attention, and hopefully the eventual hand of Ruth in marriage becomes his only obsession.  Ruth helps Martin pursue his dream, at the great disapproval of her controlling mother.  All through his improvement training, Martin takes up writing day and night, and very much like his creator, London himself, after years of literary rejection, finally gets some recognition.  Eventually he loses the girl; rather she loses faith in him. Eden later has works published, becomes famous, takes up with socialists and anarchists, gets fame, is disillusioned by the life of the wealthy, gives his money away to his less privileged friends and family and… well, I don’t want to give it all away.  I will tell you that this does not end on a good note though…

But I urge you to read the book…or wait for the film. Once this great screenplay is purchased and produced by some brilliant visionary it will be a certain hit, not only here in the U.S. but this is a sure bet for international attention as London’s book is even today very popular throughout Europe and other parts of the world.  And why am I so hopeful and confident about this script?  Because I, Jim Farina, am the proud author.