This sounds worse than it ends up being.
The truth is your body can get used to just about anything, which includes getting up, Monday through Friday, at an ungodly hour.
I have had this particular shift for about four months which is just enough time for me to start to appreciate the things I experience at this time of the morning. I have decided that my sudden acknowledgment for these sights mean one of two things. Either I am 1) growing up and coming to terms with the reality of a full-time job or 2) I have completely lost my mind. But, as per always I assume that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. You see, at 4 in the morning Lincoln tends to be at its most beautiful. I have lived in bigger cities, ones that never sleep, but Lincoln likes it slumber and it is sleeping in. The twenty minutes I spend driving to work allow me just enough time to smell the bread in the bakeries, see the dew cling to the streets, and maybe most importantly, not see a single soul. Don't get me wrong the streets here are never crowded, except, perhaps on Fall Saturdays. Lincoln is, however, the type of town that you are almost always guaranteed to run into someone you know. Which makes Lincoln both, simultaneously, wonderful and annoying. I can get ready to go out at night with the mantra, "I will not see Greg tonight, I will not see Greg tonight", running over and over in my head and undoubtedly Greg will be the first person I bump into. In this way Lincoln doesn't let you get away with anything. But, it is on those drives at 4 in the morning that I feel like I did when my father and I shared a secret as a child. I feel like I am privy to a side of this city that no one else is. I feel as if I am in on a secret that no one else knows.
I talk almost constantly about moving again. I have gone back and forth between different cities and Lincoln for quite sometime. I move away, get bored, move back, get bored, and move again. But I always come back.
I know the feeling. When I had to wake up at 5:30 to work in the deli, there were people out when I left, but it was almost as if we shared some sort of sacred knowledge, experiencing a sort of beauty that other poor, sleeping souls were voluntarily surrendering. I loved it. And I love living in a city that sleeps.
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