It wasn't always this way.

When we first started doing these Sunday morning hangover columns, the three of us brothers were living in Florida. And I know we didn't get up in time to watch any of the Sunday morning talk shows. It might not have started until after it became just Aaron and I living in the Madison house in Albuquerque. I can't imagine our too-short-lived roommate Brian getting up to watch politics with us on a Sunday morning.

So it was still the 90s, but in the waning years (if not year) of the last decade, last millennium. Either Aaron or I would make coffee (this would be when my coffee drinking started as well) and turn on "Meet The Press." It comes on at nine a.m. around here. And there were some weeks when that was way too early to get up on a Sunday morning.

As we amped and warmed up with the coffee, the discussions of Tim Russert and whoever was pushing his or her political agenda would start to frame our minds about the task to come later in the morning, writing the weekly Shut Up, I'm Talking column.

There were mornings when it was no help at all. The roundtable was just grinding the same talk we'd heard all week or even longer. And other times, it was great. I could pick up on something somebody said and then expand it for my own use. Even more, it made me start to crystallize something I'd been mulling for the few days before.

And it became habit. So much so, as I said before, I have no idea when it started. It just always has been.

There were some Sunday mornings when "Meet The Press" was preempted (or moved) from its nine o'clock spot by sports. Usually tennis. A men's final. And even though we'd probably watch it (although by the time I got up for the French Open finals this year, it was all over, Nadal was just killing Federer), the tennis never helped me figure out what to write about. Unless I decided to write about tennis.

But Tim usually had something to say. Some questions for an important person of the day. Or maybe he just had Carville and Matalin in a kind of couple's therapy political discussion. And in the months leading up to the primary elections this year, every single one of those candidates made at least one stop at Meet The Press. Eyes rolled many times, but I did get a sense of all of those people with Presidential-sized delusions from their shot with Tim.

Sometimes the discussions set me off. I'd argue with the people on the TV who couldn't hear me and really didn't care what I had to say. And sometimes I wouldn't make it through the program. If it didn't seem like anything important was being discussed, I'd have to cast around for another source of inspiration.

And sometimes after the whole hour of Tim, I'd still have no idea what to talk about.

I knew, from the moment I heard Tim Russert died on Friday afternoon, this would be my topic for the week. I'm the only one of the three who still gets up to watch Meet The Press these days. Being on my own, I've kept a few of my habits.

In a way, it's a collaborator or filter. I'll know in the first half hour if the interview or round table is of any use to me. And many times they talk about stuff I either don't care about at all, have no opinion on, or have no interest in telling the world what I think. And maybe I should put world in quotes, because my audience is nothing like Tim's. His is The World, in capitals. Mine is, at best, just my world. A much smaller place.

I think the definition of habit is a thing that, not only do you think you can't live without, but something you don't even think about not being there. And seeing Tim Russert most Sunday mornings at nine a.m. is certainly one of those things.

And why I'm still writing in the present tense.

Because, not knowing this man in a personal way at all, I can still see him. Hear him talk. Hear him ask the tough questions. Forever (or as long as forever is for me) archived in the great memory banks of our twenty-first century world.

It's going to be lonely on Sunday mornings, having to flip about to find a new anchor to help me frame my mind for these weekly musings.

I will miss you Tim.

Matt Worley knows Wolf Blitzer just ain't a good substitute for Tim Russert.