Before the day begins, I am already at my desk.
I wake up before the sun, before the house settles into its usual rhythm, before the day begins asking anything of me. It’s the only time I’ve found that feels like it belongs entirely to writing.
During the week, I tell myself I’ll find an hour somewhere — in the evening, after work, after everything else that needs to be done. But the day has already taken so much by then. I’ve spent hours at my desk, and my body reminds me of it. There’s a walk I need to take, or some form of movement, because I can’t afford not to. Dinner follows. Then the small, necessary things that make up a life — messages to answer, laundry to fold, a kind of tiredness that settles in quietly but firmly.
By the time I sit down, there’s nothing left to give the page.
So I write on Saturdays and Sundays.
This is not a routine I designed with intention. It is simply what my life allows.
There was a time, not long ago, when writing occupied more of my days. I could sit with a paragraph until it revealed the structure hidden inside it. A morning could pass without urgency. The work unfolded at its own pace, and I followed.
That is no longer the case.
Now, the week belongs to other responsibilities. Writing moves to the edges of it, held carefully in the early hours of the weekend. I wake in the dark and return to whatever has stayed with me — a sentence I’ve been turning over, an image that hasn’t let go, sometimes just a feeling waiting for language.
I don’t always begin right away. There are mornings when I sit longer than I’d like, unsure if anything will come. There are weekends when the words arrive slowly, or not at all. The time feels small when I measure it against everything I want to do.
And yet, I keep returning.
Because the hours are limited, I arrive at the page differently now. I pay closer attention. I don’t wander as much. I don’t assume there will always be more time later. There is a quiet urgency to these mornings — not frantic, but focused. I listen more carefully for where the sentence wants to go. I make decisions I might have postponed before.
During the week, the writing continues in another form. I carry fragments with me — a line that surfaces while I’m walking, a phrase that arrives without warning. I don’t always write them down. Sometimes I trust that what matters will remain.
Not everything does.
But enough stays.
By nine in the morning, I can already feel the day beginning to shift.
The light is fully in the room. The quiet I had earlier starts to loosen. And I begin to think about breakfast — what we’ll have, whether there’s enough in the fridge, whether I should start cooking.
This is the only time I get with him, really. The week moves too quickly for anything unhurried. Mornings like this are where we find each other again, in small ways.
So I linger a little longer at the page, even as I know I’ll have to step away soon.
The work doesn’t end. It just waits, again.
I am learning to accept this version of a writing life. Not as something diminished, but as something shaped by the rest of what I cannot set aside — my work, my body, the life I share with someone else.
Two mornings a week.
A few hours before the light fully settles into the day.
It may not resemble the writing life I once imagined, or the one I sometimes still wish for. But it is steady in its own way. It asks only that I return, when I can, and begin again.
Before the day begins.
Renato Gandia 