Breakfast is a meal I skipped for a good chunk of my adult life. Let’s just say my idea of making breafast involved keeping a box of rice krispies on hand along with a gallon of milk. And lets’ face it, it was rarely consumed at breakfast.
I attribute this to my past life as a night owl. I was growing up, I was in college, and well after college as well. I’ve always loved staying up until 2am reading, listening to music, or those few times a year you could binge watch Dr Who for like 3 days on PBS. As I grew older, going out to bars was a fun social thing to do and catch up with friends were I grew up. That whole waking up before 7am shit was just not for me during the week, and weekends I prided myself on my ability to sleep until 11am-noon.
Yet upon moving to Colorado and going to work at the local paper, that started to change. My coworkers were all older than me and they often liked to go across the way to the hospital cafteria which has the best views in town. We got a deal on our meals as we were at the paper and so heading over for breakfast shortly after we got to work became the thing to do. As I established myself in my position and met my goals, I had a lot of free time and started exploring other places as well.
I was hooked on breakfast food.
As time went on my sleep habits changed and I started waking up earlier each day. First, it was getting up in time to hit the local diner right when they opened at 7am. I loved getting their right at 7am and there were regulars I got to know that were there like clockwork certain days of the week. Always someone interesting to chat with.
Then a buddy of mine whom I’d have dinner with once a week or so switched jobs and now his available time to get dinner had changed as well. We were reduced to only being able to get breakfast on the weekends. Slowly he too started getting up earlier and earlier until we just created a policy that the first one up on the decided upon day would text the other person to see if they were too, when the other replied along with when the first one up was up decided where we’d eat breakfast that day. If we were up in time for 6am breakfast, we’d do one of two spots. In time for 7am we had those spots plus a couple that opened at 7am. And those lazy days were weren’t up early enough we had our spot that opened at 8am that we’d hit.
Fucking fantastic system.
Now if I’m up during the week before 6am I have a spot I go to nearby that is open at 6am and has a fantastic wait staff. Fantastic. Food is good, but not my first choice, but sometimes it’s not all about just the food. I’ll roll over there with my iPad Pro in a bag along with a Moleskin notepad. I can get a lot done between 6am-8am sitting in the far back booth early in the morning during that time. It’s a great way to start the day.
I never thought I’d be a breakfast person and I’ll admit, I still don’t eat it everyday unless I’m really burning the calories during the week. But man, those days I do get up nice and early for breakfast are a true hidden delight of life.