Unless I am sick as a dog, I haven't slept past 7am on any day of the week, since maybe college? The internal alarm clock in my body goes off and the light switch in my head turns on and there is no going back. I'm awake. No matter how tired I may be from the day before or how bad I probably could use the extra sleep, there is no stopping my body from powering up. I'm honestly pretty robotic. It's Saturday and I'm awake at 6:15am. I usually wake up at 5:30am. I slept in?

I pop and crackle as I stretch out the kinks in my body from the strange sleep positions I contorted into while being down for usually 6-7 hours each night and I can sometimes feel every year of my age as I sit up and take the first steps of my day. My brain is in control of the machine and my brain wants to get going.

I don't drink coffee or any other "upper" in the morning. In all honesty, I've had fewer cups of coffee in my life than years lived. I'm a morning person, but I don’t accompany this routine with any form of stimulants and the only fluid I consume would be water. If you send me to Starbucks to get you anything, you better write it down because I am completely lost in that place. I know as much about ordering coffee as I do building a rocket ship. I've been to Starbucks and I enjoy ordering as much as the baristas enjoy walking me through the steps it takes to order. Want to see a grown man talked down to like a child? Sit down, log into the free Wi-Fi and watch me order. I am sure it is comical to the overpriced coffee drinking hipsters at Starbucks.

It's not a competition for me. I don't need to prove to anyone how much I can accomplish with the least amount of sleep or show the world that I am better because I'm awake earlier. It really boils down to one thing for me.

I don't want to miss a thing.

(Cue Aerosmith)

I want to suck the marrow out of the world and digest as much as I can while I am here. I'm not talking about climbing the Alps or going on a grand safari in Africa, those things would be nice; I'm talking about not missing an opportunity to be a part of it all. To consume the things and the people around me. To just be there. To witness and often contribute. It's not about being the early bird or being the worm, but to be a part of it when it all goes down. I don't have a fear of missing out, but I do have a fear of wasted moments.

When my younger brother died at age 8 (I was 11) my brain flipped a switch and the seed was planted that I needed to not live a wasted life. That I need to contribute, be a part of it all and consume the moments, people and opportunities. I need to matter to the people in my life. Due to a car accident, Jimmy wasn't given a chance to see beyond his first 8 years, so the desire to really live became increasingly important to me. I needed to honor him by not becoming a waste of flesh and bone, but to matter and not miss those opportunities to matter. When Michael passed, my older brother who died a few years ago, I was hit in the head with a tragic reminder that I needed to keep my foot on the accelerator and stick to the promise that I made to myself at age 11. Yeah, some kids were just discovering the opposite sex, while I was plotting out my importance and how I was going to live the rest of my life.

(Cue 5 for Fighting "100 years").

So the first person to greet me this morning as I walked into the kitchen was my 6 year old son Sean. Holding his "woobie" and a few other stuffed animals, he joined me in the living room and we hugged for a while and talked about the things that go on in the head of a 6 year old boy. (Mostly video game stuff). I hugged him tightly and soaked it all in as we rocked back and forth on the love seat. I most likely won't say this about my kids when they get older, but at 9 and 6, I love how they smell. It not only reminds me of my childhood, but I equate the smell to love and my heart fills. Sucking the marrow out of the moment and just digesting the love. This may sound strange to many who are reading this, but I believe most parents will understand.

Today, the reason I woke up and got out of bed was because there was a little boy that I needed to spend a few minutes with on the couch. I needed to matter to him and he certainly matters to me.

#Tryharder to matter in the moments we are given and to those who matter to us.