At eight in the morning, incoherent and not fully aware of where I was, I reached over to hit snooze on my alarm clock. The room was dark, the bed was warm, and I was nowhere near ready to wake up. So, ten minutes later, another snooze. I repeated this cycle for the next hour until my alarm gave up. I don’t remember any of it, but I didn't get out of bed until eleven thirty, so I have to assume that’s how it all went down. My thought process when setting the alarm the night before went like this:

• Get a solid eight hours of sleep.

• Wake up well rested.

• Get a head start on initiating a new morning routine.

By August 2020, the world began to resemble a zombie apocalypse movie. In the parking lot of every tour bus company, weeds had forced themselves through cracks in the pavement. Without vehicles coming and going, there was nothing to stunt their growth.

In my late twenties, I had a mohawk and looked closer to twenty than twenty-nine. As a touring sound person, my baby face was a cause for concern among some colleagues. A seasoned audio engineer has some wrinkles and often a grey ponytail.