It’s 5:06am.

When I was a kid, I remember getting up this early to watch Saturday morning cartoons. At the time, our TV seemed giant. And, well, it was! It weighed over a hundred pounds. This was the model we had:

Look at all that wood! Hard to believe we ever built electronics enclosed on all side by like… real wood, you know?

Outside, I can still hear the insects chirping, and the sun hasn’t risen quite yet. Some moments we choose, and some choose us. I woke up out of a dead sleep, and a few half-hearted attempts to fall back asleep proved fruitless.

Thus, a new day dawns.

There’s a whiteboard in the corner of the room, propped up on two pinkish-red cross sections of an old Cedar tree, and it’s filled from one end to the other with a flow chart I wrote which breaks out battle logic specific to units in GREEN KNIGHT. I get a lot of compliments on my handwriting from people, which is always surprising to me. Early on, in elementary school, my teachers would harangue me for holding a pencil the ‘wrong’ way. Yet, to their credit, none of them would ever tell me I had to hold it the way they advised.

I’m glad.

I learned how to do something important, my way, and it’s been incredibly useful to me.

If you’ve ever watched Mad Men, then you likely remember a chestnut or two that ol’ Bert Cooper dropped here and there, and this was one of my favorites: