Before my job at Maker, I worked at Jamba Juice for over a year. Now, don’t get me wrong, the job had its highlights and I met some of the greatest people there, but something told me my life calling wasn’t making smoothies and adding dietary supplements to people’s drinks. That, and I had the opening shift, which meant we opened up shop at 7am. This also meant that I usually had to be there earlier than that. This is when I started waking up at 5am.

As you can imagine, that was very hard to adjust to. But I did it anyway, and eventually got used to it. It was still pretty tough though, so at one point, I decided to play mind games on myself. A lot of celebrities I liked at the time tweeted things like “On my way to the set” or “Super early call time today!” I used to get so jealous because even though they were waking up early, just like me, they were going to do something that sounded ridiculously fun. So, building a bridge between the two, I started referring to my start times at Jamba Juice as call times. This kinda sorta helped make waking up at 5am a little easier, when I got to tweet that I, too, had a call time.

Flash forward to now, when my alarm woke me up at 5am again (although I snoozed until 5:30). It still sucks waking up so early, but today, I actually do have call times to report to. Maybe not early in the morning, but I’m practically shooting all day, and I still can’t believe that this is my life now. I get to do a weekly show, and get to work with some of the best YouTubers in the industry. Sometimes, I feel like I’m dreaming, and will wake up at 5am…pissed. But for the past few months, I think it’s safe to say that I haven’t been dreaming, but have been living the dream.

Also, it’s very peaceful and kind of empowering to be up before most of the world is (minus time zones). That and it’s great to just wake up at all. So…let’s do this.