One of the reasons that I moved from Knoxville to San Diego is because the sun never rose early enough in Knoxville. Knoxville is roughly \(84^\circ\) west of Greenwich, and \(84 > 7.5 + 5 \cdot 15\), so it should have been six time zones west of GMT. That is, it should have been in central time (like Nashville is). But, no, Knoxville is in eastern time. And there are times of the year when the sun doesn’t rise until crazy-late in the morning. Like today, sunrise is at 7:31am. Waking up before sunrise is a way of life in Knoxville.

I would rant and assert that this made it impossible for me to live in Knoxville. I would emphatically argue that my circadian rhythm was so inexorably linked to the sun that it was impossible for me to function during standard clock-time in Knoxville. I needed to use an alarm clock in order to be places on time in the morning. Barbaric.

The earliest possible sunrise in Knoxville is roughly 6:20am. When I summered in Cambridge, MA, I would wake up early because Cambridge is so far north and so far east that the sun comes up so very early in the morning. I would have early morning meetings with my night-owl colleagues. The only real power I had over the students in my charge was waking them up at 6am. Early morning sun made everything possible.

San Diego is \(117.16^\circ\) west of Greenwich, and safely within the pacific time zone. Even today, on our way into winter, the sun will rise around 6:30am.

And, yet, here I am awake before 4am. For the past several months I have been waking up at roughly this time without an alarm clock. The internet tells me that this is called “Terminal Insomnia.” It is unclear to me whether this is a vestige of my neurological adventures this summer or whether I am living in some sort of folk tale, and my before-sunrise awakenings are some sort of literary device to undermine one of my justifications for leaving Knoxville.