John sits up at his desk and looks at his digital clock staring back at him reading 6:28. He sighs in relief out of not being woken up by the blaring alarm clock in his bedroom. He looks down at the reason he’s lost so much sleep recently; he finally finished his latest project the previous night but hiding his blueprints is his green notebook. He tosses yesterday’s outfit down the laundry chute, throws on his around-the-house shorts, and goes upstairs to proceed to wake up his oldest son of fifteen years. John knocks on Edward’s door and tells him to get ready for school. “Uhhhggg, yeah dad…,” Edward groggily mutters, obviously still sleepy. John strolls into his bathroom and continues his morning ritual; he brushes his teeth, gets dressed, and goes downstairs to have his morning cup of coffee. He walks outside to get the newspaper and blankly scans through the pages at the kitchen table. A few minutes later Edward lazily stumbles down the stairs, grabs a Poptart, says bye to his father, and leaves to catch a ride to school with his friend.


At precisely 7:10 John knocks on the door of his second oldest child, a daughter by the name of Kristen, who proceeds with a similar reply as Edward gave him forty minutes earlier. John walks down the hall to his third child’s room, goes in, and taps his son on the shoulder. Bryan’s eyes flutter open and he waves good morning to his father. John uses sign language to tell Bryan to get ready for school and that breakfast will be ready for him when he comes downstairs.


John puts a couple Hot Pockets in the Microwave as he waits for his daughter and son to come down so he can drive them to school. He realizes they won’t be down for another few of minutes, so he goes back into his in-house office and checks his email. He opens one up from his boss and finds that his architecture firm won the big job of designing the new football stadium for the Middleton Mountain Lions. As one of the top architects in the firm, John knows he’ll be spending a lot of long days at work, and probably long nights at home for the next few weeks. He loves the job but has been contemplating retiring, or at least pleading with his bosses for more time off and reads over his green notebook once again. Ever since his wife died two years ago, it’s been really difficult for him, and even more so for his children; he’d like to be free to spend more time with them.


Kristen and Bryan race down the stairs and grab the Hot Pockets out of the microwave. Bryan pages through the sports section of the paper while Kristen takes the comics. After seeing his sister laughing, Bryan asks by sign language what she’s laughing at. She hands the paper over to him and he cracks up just as much as his sister. John walks back into the kitchen; he decides to tell his children about the new job tonight at dinner while they’re all together. The kids finish their breakfast and John finishes his coffee. They get in the car and John drives them to school and heads to work.


At the firm, John settles his things in his office and goes to see his boss. “Good Morning John! Perfect timing, we’re heading into a meeting about the Mountain Lions’ new stadium right now.” John follows his boss to the conference room and sits through the meeting, his mind trailing in and out of actually paying attention and offers his own ideas every now and again. The meeting ends with all of the employees excited about the stadium and all the money the firm will be pulling in. John goes back to his office and sketches a few possibilities for the stadium. He reads over his green notebook for what seems to be the millionth time in the last few weeks. He goes back to his boss, “Hey, Mr. Williams, you got a few minutes?” “Yeah what’s up?” he replies. “I’d like to talk about my position with the firm. You see….”