6:25 am

I half-woke to a muffled buzzing sound, or maybe it was a subtle vibration; at that level of sleep one’s senses muddle together into a single amorphous impression of pleasure or pain.  It took four buzz-throbbings for me to realize that I had left my phone on vibrate, and that this was my cue to be rising and shining. 

In a rare moment of early morning lucidity, I was unusually grateful for the snooze button.  I say 'unusually' not because it afforded a momentary delay of wakeful activity (that feeling occurs daily); but because today, for the first time, I realized that I never fully slip back into the cocoon of sleep.  The snooze button carves out an extra five minutes where I am neither conscious nor unconscious, but simply alive.  It is that fleeting period where neither whimsical dreaming nor mundane rationality occupy center stage—where one can contemplate the day—devoid of its cares and concerns—and its infinite possibilities.

Perhaps it’s time to start sleeping with a notebook on the nightstand…