For the last 14 years, I have made a ceremony out of my mornings. I’ve guarded my morning ritual with a strictness that many people—especially non-morning people—can’t wrap their heads around. I’ve talked to night owls dumbfounded…both of us trying but failing to speak the same language. Where I see so much possibility at sunrise, they see it in the dark, syrupy hours overnight.
My family often resents me for being the least social of the bunch, and it’s true that family trips don’t hold the same appeal for me as they do for others. Not because I don’t love my family, but because I seem to need more peace and quiet (alone time) than they do. Nowhere is this more clear than in the mornings, when instead of settling in over breakfast for a luxurious hour of reading, I have to make…conversation. This makes me feel like a robot short-circuiting amidst a sea of sleepy eyes.
Every other morning I make myself an acai bowl, one whose toppings are so precisely placed in a pie graph shape that a friend once called it “Michelle Obama’s food plate.” On the other days, when motivation is lacking, I have cereal, because baby food has its place too. If anyone can find a coconut yogurt that doesn’t upset your stomach (it’s the pea protein, FYI), I’ll add that to the rotation, too. I eat it all, always, and wash it down with an inch of cold brew.
I read NYT’s The Morning newsletter from top to bottom (including 80% of the articles mentioned) because I am a compulsive consumer of information who has convinced myself, inexplicably, that I need to know about things like trade routes and semiconductors (I don’t!). I mix that in with a few Substacks (Scantron, Ask Polly, The Next, Bookbear) and, because I also like trash, Reddit threads like FauxMoi, where smart but gossip-hungry people (many from the “industry” themselves) converge to make fun of/criticize the idiocy of Hollywood.
All of this—from the highbrow to the low—feels like a massage for my brain. It fills a void whose origin I can’t entirely place, though my mom is also a news junkie and reads so much that she’s easily the smartest person I know. I’m extremely curious about almost everything, and there’s something about the morning that feels to me like the best time to learn, to think clearly, to be the best version of myself. Where afternoon me is a crusty, blank-headed shell who needs pep talks to complete a sentence, morning me has valedectorian energy: bubbling over with motivation, excitement, the desire to learn.
Just don’t interrupt me.
Weekly momentos:
A text from one of my best friends E: “You don’t regret being loving.”
This piece about how bad Barbie was because…it was.
“OMG” by Suki Waterhouse
Honoring vulnerability, even when it’s hard.
Season 1 of RHOBH which I have, unfortunately or fortunately, started watching.
A24’s In-Yun Zine by Celine Song