Morning Startup: A Life Still Booting

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — November 7, 2026

I woke up this morning and said grace.

Not for food. Not yet.

“Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

What gifts?

Being alive. Being awake. Another day.

That counts.

It’s strange how mornings work. The body and the mind don’t agree on anything. The brain comes online first, like a supervisor clocking in early, already making plans.

“We should exercise right now.”

The body answers back immediately:

“Are you kidding me?”

Then another voice cuts in:

“Coffee.”

And another:

“This water tastes terrible. Fix that first.”

And underneath all of it, the baseline signal:

“I feel like I got hit by a truck.”

That’s the morning. That’s the startup sequence.

Nothing clean. Nothing organized. Just systems waking up at different speeds, all talking over each other.

And somewhere in the middle of it, I’m wandering around humming “Good Morning Starshine” from Hair, because that is the kind of absurd, cheerful little thread the mind sometimes grabs onto while the rest of the machinery is still trying to come online. It fits better than it should. Morning light, scrambled thoughts, old songs, and a man trying to rejoin the living one cup of coffee and one glass of water at a time.

If anyone is wondering which impulse is winning, right now the water is out front. Exercise is making a strong run in second place. Holding off on posting anything is limping along at the back of the pack, and frankly it looks tired. That one has won too many races already. It does not need another medal. It has already taken gold on more mornings than I care to count.

Somewhere in the middle of that noise, old memories drift in. Not invited. Not scheduled. Just there.

A thought about my daughter. A moment from years ago. The kind of thing that still doesn’t make sense no matter how many times you turn it over in your head.

That’s part of the morning too.

Not something to solve. Not something to fix before coffee.

Just something that passes through while everything else is coming online.

That’s the part nobody tells you about getting older. You don’t wake up empty. You wake up carrying everything you’ve lived through, and it shows up in pieces while you’re trying to figure out whether to drink water or make coffee.

And still, underneath all of that, there’s something else.

A quiet realization:

“I’m okay. I’m here.”

That matters more than anything else going on in the moment.

There’s always this question first thing in the morning:

What do I do right now?

Exercise? Coffee? Sit down? Get moving?

The truth is, it doesn’t need a perfect answer.

It just needs a first step.

Get fresh water.

Stand up.

Move a little.

Let the day open instead of trying to force it into shape before you’re even fully awake.

That’s the mistake. Thinking the day needs to be decided in the first five minutes.

It doesn’t.

The system is still booting.

And that’s what this is, really. Not failure. Not confusion. Just a system coming online.

Mind first. Body second. Memory somewhere in between.

And somewhere in there, a small moment of clarity:

This is a good morning.

Not because everything is perfect.

Not because the past is resolved.

Not because the body feels great.

But because I woke up, said the words, and recognized the gift.

That’s enough.

The rest can come later.

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For more from Cliff Potts, see https://cliffpotts.org