Morning Routine

I wish I had a good morning routine. I mean a ritual. Not just habits.

I’ve got habits for days. My morning habit, for instance, is usually to get up (when my daughter wakes up, yelling for “Mommy”), bring the daughter to the mommy so she can nurse, fall back asleep, wake up when they’re done, fix breakfast for the kid, drink a Red Bull, and get on my phone.

What I want is a routine more like this:

Wake up before anyone else. Make some tea. Sit on the back porch and meditate, taking breaks now and then to drink my delicious tea. Stare at the beautiful sky and the mountains. (We’re surrounded in China by some of the most gorgeous, gothically-prehistoric scenery I’ve ever seen.) Think about the one thing I want to get accomplished today. And then, when my daughter wakes up, start my day.

That sounds so relaxing, doesn’t it? No phone, no obligations, no rush. Just blissful boredom to start the day. I can only imagine it would make the day feel longer (in a good way), and more rewarding, and make whatever challenges I would face easier to tackle.

The downside is, it would require getting up quite early indeed, which is hard enough as it is. On top of that, I’d have to go to bed rather early in the evening. Not only would this mean I couldn’t do the fun things at night that I want to do, like binge watch Lost with my wife or write insightful (ha) blog posts, but it would cut into time that Amanda and I would spend together as well.

Sure, we could both have this routine of getting up in the morning together, but…well, that’s not quite the same, is it? The appeal of this kind of morning solitude is the solitude part of it. I can imagine that if my wife even wanted to get up early with me, and go to bed early with me, the morning wouldn’t feel quite as relaxing as I imagine it would otherwise.

Listen to me, speculating about counterfactuals. Not only do I not know what my morning routine would be like with a partner, I don’t even know what it would be like period. It’s not my morning routine. It’s my fantasy. It’s not fair of me to say it wouldn’t be the same with her there. It would be exactly the same, insofar as it would still be completely hypothetical.

So, why not just start the routine and see how it goes? I’ll ask her to join me if she’s interested, but whether or not she is it will certainly be an improvement over my Red-Bull-and-smartphone habit.

Tomorrow is Monday morning. I can’t think of a better time to try to implement this new plan. I’ve already had two successful weeks of working out regularly, and I’m already feeling it become just a part of the daily routine. Why not take an extra step and start getting up earlier?

It starts with going to bed earlier, and that will happen tonight.

I’ll let you know how everything goes.

 

Peace and long life.