sunrises are for suckers

This is what sunset looks like from my office. I'd offer a picture of sunrise
over the San Diego skyline, but, well, no...

Due to a ridiculous amount of work in my life, I've been in the office before sunrise twice this week and gone home hours after sunset. This is not healthy, but it reminded me of a piece I wrote a few years back on the topic of sunrise/sunset personality types. So, as a hump day throwback, please enjoy "Sunrise, Sunset."

According to George Washington Carver, “nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.” As much as I love peanut butter, I have to disagree. Not completely. In an earlier blog, I concluded that sunrise is most beautiful in the mountains, but sunset is more beautiful over the ocean. 

Being back in San Diego, however, has reminded me of one of life’s true-isms: in a wrestling match, sunset on the Pacific beats sunrise anywhere over the head with a steel chair every time.

Don’t agree? Here are three reasons you should.

1. You don’t have to get early up to see it.

This isn’t a morning person/night person binary. It’s just common sense. I mean, seriously, early risers get everything – the worm, a quiet house, the best waves, an unfounded reputation for being go-getters. They also get a sense of ownership over the beauty of the moment, that self-serving pride that says “I deserve to see this because I set my alarm clock and didn’t ignore it when it went off.”

Slackers need a prize, and that prize is the most beautiful part of the day. We know we don’t deserve it. We know we’re unable to lay claim to having a hand in the experience. Maybe we just have a better understanding of grace because we have a much harder time convincing ourselves we should be given any based on our actions.

2. The death of color is always more vibrant than its birth.

Apologies to Robert Frost (and Pony Boy), but nature’s first green isn’t gold. (Irony alert: Microsoft Word’s grammar check identifies this version of his famous line as grammatically problematic. Guess humans are still better than machines at a few things, even if one of those things is not winning Jeopardy). No, nature’s last gold is gold. Just before they die, greens give way to the deepest, richest colors. And so it goes with the sunset. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve watched the light of the sun coming up and thought “those colors are amazing.” I can count the same number of times I’ve uttered those words as the Big Orange dropped into the ocean in the last ten days.

3. The Green Flash.

If you don’t know what that is, it’s probably because you either haven’t spent much time in Southern California or you’ve followed the age old of wisdom of not looking directly into the sun. But out here, we do it anytime the day is clear and the water is calm on the off chance we’ll get to see fingers of green light splay out across the water just as the sun dips below the horizon. It’s a rare event, but when it happens, you know you’ve been given a gift (unless you were also up to see the sunrise that same morning, in which case you assume you’ve earned a bonus for working overtime).

I’m sure some of you disagree. Please do, in the comments section below. While you do, I’ll be outside watching the sunset.

This post originally appeared on Relief Journal's blog.

A little bit like life...

The beginning of my first attempt to climb Mt. Whitney.
At the time, it felt like a failure when I didn't make the summit.
A few years later, I could see it for what it was. My beginning.

The best part of a new piece is the potential it holds. A story we're just beginning to write could, just maybe, turn out like we hope it will. We know it won't, but we suspend our disbelief at least until the first surge of words that drove us to the page begins to ebb and the old questions press in like the tide against our shore.

I have a file full of these starts. They all have merit. Potential. A particular bounce to them.

And they're all mostly just starts. No ends. No middles. Just first steps down paths I hope to return to someday when the next wave of inspiration/time/manic energy strikes me. In many cases, I never will.

But I keep them around, like headstones on the graves of people I could have known but didn't get the chance to follow though on building any kind of relationship. They remind me that I need to keep writing. That I need to push past the gleam of the new beginning to the dirt and mundane that comes with the uplift and connection of our closest connections. That I need to put in the work to really see whether they will break my heart or help it expand beyond the limits I impose on it myself. 

In essence, there really is no such thing as a false start. There are only the starts that end so I have the time and focus to make the ones I really need to pursue.