Over the last four years I've made a habit of coming into my office in the morning and just getting to work.

In my day at 12 years old which was 38 years ago we worked out in summer months for two and a half hours. Today someone in that age group might work out for four hours two hours in the morning and two at night.

In the last year my wife has noticed me struggling to get downstairs on a Sunday morning. I've two young children and football has been so good to me over the years I don't want to spoil it.

I had three children while doing a show as demanding as 'Good Morning America ' so this is - you know it's almost like I'm less daunted about motherhood and parenting at this point in time. And I think I'm just much more fit and healthy than I was 20-years-ago.

Throughout my 20s I spent a lot of time just playing and not really working but fortunately for me I continued to get just enough work and have a reason to wake up in the morning. I really empathize with some of my peers who had success in the early years then it dries up and so there's no reason to get up in the morning.

I never thought in a million years I'd be that healthy girl who wakes up every morning to exercise. After being called 'cherubic and chubby ' I'm rocking a bikini!

We hear the stories every day now: the father who puts on a suit every morning and leaves the house so his daughter doesn't know he lost his job the recent college grad facing up to the painful reality that the only door that's open to her after four years of study and a pile of debt is her parents'. These are the faces of the Obama economy.

I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about it all the time - when I woke up in the morning when I went to sleep at night - and that went on for eight years.

What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism.

Thanks to the greatest invention of recent years the MP3-playing alarm clock I can now choose the song that wakes me up in the morning.