Kimberlee K.

A little over a year ago, I decided that I was going to start waking up every Friday to watch the sunrise.

How peaceful! I thought.

How gorgeous!

What a way to welcome in the weekend!

And so, I set my alarm for 5:45am.

It was only an hour earlier than my usual alarm, but it still felt like I was doing something incredible. It gave me the same feeling I get while setting goals at the beginning of a new year, like, this is going to change my whole life!!

The morning air was chilly, so I pulled on my robe and slippers and quietly walked out my sliding door, my breath visible in the dim morning light.

I sat down on the storage bin full of Christmas decorations that lives on my balcony for most of the year and took a deep breath—then I realized the lid was drenched from the rain we’d got the previous night and it immediately soaked through to my basketball shorts.

In an attempt to quickly pivot, I took the robe and shorts off, pulled on a pair of sweats and a hoodie, and then dragged a chair from the kitchen out to the balcony.

Then I took another deep breath, this time one that lasted.

I decided to take notes of what I saw, imagining a notebook full of sunrise memories, of intentional moments of peace, of proof that I can wake up early and embrace the day.

The birds are awake before everyone else, I wrote.

Two ducks just flew by.

The sky is the color of butter.

An airplane just drew a puffy white line.

A few of my neighbors are already leaving for work, their days start earlier than mine.

One neighbor is bringing in his trash barrel. It is so loud this early in the morning, the sound echoes down the alley.

I wish I drank coffee.

There are so many small, quiet sounds in the morning that I usually miss.

After a little while, I walked back inside and went about the rest of my morning routine.

Ah, I thought, refreshed, this is going to change my life.

But the next Friday, I snoozed my alarm.

And in the weeks that followed I snoozed it again and again and again.

To this day, that is the only intentional Friday I woke up to see the sunrise.

And while I’d like to feel guilty about that, I’m mostly just proud that I did it once.

And I like to read back through the notes I took, which can still transport me to that nice little morning. To those 10 minutes spent just sitting, watching, and listening; looking at the sky that was the color of butter.

It didn’t become a habit, and that’s okay.

Mornings are hard for me.

But the notes do exactly what I hoped they’d do: they make me want to wake up to see another sunrise. And even more than that, they remind me that no matter what kind of night I had, there is always a sunrise to see.

There is always the option to set that alarm a little bit earlier, to tip toe out onto the balcony and breathe it all in: the morning, the world, life, or maybe just the color of the sky.