I rise at 5 a.m. each day to write, and it’s like slaying a dragon each time. There’s the ‘resistance’, the voice that questions my abilities, worth, sanity. The resistance never sleeps. It never slackens, and it never really goes away. The dragon must be slain anew every morning. We all have our dragons.

Early in life while I was at Amarillo High School, I began trying to live each day as if it was my last. Later I learned that’s a ‘thing’: remembering that death is near. Pulitzer-prize winner Russell Banks keeps an angel with the inscription memento mori over his desk wherever he works.

“No one becomes immune to the evil inner-voice that makes us doubt ourselves,” Banks said, “that tells us we’re inadequate or incapable, that puts us in a rut and tries to keep us there. What separates those who do great things is the ability to quell those voices before they swell.”

Marcus Aurelius routinely wrote of his impending death: “Do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life,” he said. That thought usually frees me from the resistance. It’s why I sit here at 5 a.m., writing each weekday.

And, I must admit, the weekend reward I give myself — sleeping until 6:30 a.m. — is pretty grand.

Have a spectacular week, and please, let me know what you think.