The alarm goes off at 4:30 every morning. It has to. Otherwise, you won't have enough time to think. In four very short hours you will be due at any number of monkey-clock fuck-arounds, and it’s crucial to be as fresh as possible when you do the good work.

Your first inclination will be to hit the snooze, and initially you will. That's okay. But, you will grow accustomed to this ungodly hour surprisingly fast, and then the routine will flow like second nature.

Now, a word about the routine. It goes like this:

1.) The alarm.

2.) Your eyes SNAP open.

3.) You pat the empty space in the bed next to you, then remember you're all alone (even though the remnants of your pathetic little dream life will try and convince you otherwise).

4.) You thank whatever God it is you pray to that your cat didn't pop the air mattress you sleep on in the middle of the night (even though, technically, it is still the middle of the night).

5.) And you drag your punk-ass to the toilet, focusing just enough to keep from pissing on the floor.

Then... you're awake!

Well, almost. The next step is the most crucial: caffeine.

If you're lucky enough to have a coffee pot, then its obvious those same gods that have spared your air mattress look down upon you more than just favorably. You're like a Gay-Liberal-Jesus to these fucks. Congrats. Now fuck off.

For the rest of us, I recommend doubling up tea bags in your favorite stained mug. It doesn't leave such a bitter taste after drinking cup after cup of the cheap shit. It's cheap, if I haven't mentioned it, and it makes you feel like a high-minded literary type, to boot. Hell, consider yourself lucky to have it. As the great Eric Blair once said, "Every tramp worth their salt is due the usual: tea and two slices."

Indeed.

So, now, hopefully, your mind is fast approaching that special little place we all go when its time for the good work. After all, why shouldn't it be? You've done everything you can, in the fifteen minutes you've been awake, to put yourself in a position of success.

If you're not feeling successful, or your head isn't sufficiently primed to leap off the ledge of reasonable thought, then you should re-list everything you've done right so far. To recap:

1.) Your inflatable bed made it through another night.

2.) You actually pissed in the toilet.

3.) You're lucky enough to drink cheap tea when all you want is a cup of coffee, and you heed the wisdom of a man who has been dead for fifty-seven years and was too pussy to use his real name.

So, you've got that going for you.

Now, you take your doubled up, cheap-ass tea and retire to your "living" room, which is, of course, furniture-less. You'll have a few scattered things on the floor, naturally. Probably a beat up old radio. Some CD's. A couple of your favorite novels, which, hopefully, set you down this awful path in the first place. A copy of Strunk and White you don't read. Stacks of your local newspaper. An empty plate from the previous night's meal. Flip-flops (if you live in a warm climate). And of course, your cat, who has, by now, ambled in to lick himself atop the stack of newspapers because, his goddamn living room isn't furniture-less.

And then it happens, that wonderful little moment when your entire existence comes into focus, the veil is lifted, thunder booms in the sky, and you ask yourself aloud, "What in the great green fuck am I doing?"

Sometimes, the cat stops licking himself long enough to gaze upon you, as if he might actually answer the goddamn question, but then his butthole calls him, and he vanishes back into the world of self cleaning animals.

Now it’s time to get to work.