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Today’s WP Daily Prompt asks what things need to be done within 30 minutes of waking to get the day off to the ‘right’ start; and what happened the last time one of these things didn’t get done?

In fact, what happens is that I don’t blog. Because The Very First Thing I need to do each day in order to start it off right is stretch/splash water on my face and brush my teeth/play with the cat/walk the dog/free write/drink a glass of water. And since I obviously cannot do all of those FIRST, the dominoes start cascading. Before I know it, two hours have passed, at least one of these things has fallen away, and I’m already behind on the second-tier Very First Things: getting to my Crossfit class/doing Tai Chi with my neighbor/drinking my one latte of the day/eating something/checking my calendar for the day/turning on my phone.

Here’s what I know about morning: it is my productive time. So I need to rotate my way through what comes first. Even so, what tends to get lost in the shuffle is – you guessed it – posting to this blog. It turns out that I NEED both physical exercise AND writing to set me up for the day.

My solution? To extend my definition of Very First Thing to, well, Morning. I can rotate what actually happens first. But the key is to be sure it all happens before noon. As with so many retiring colleagues, I constantly wonder how there was ever time in the day for work! Clearly I never truly got started off on the right foot.