the morning routine complex

watching a tiktok and at 5:42am she stretches and the camera is already on. she drinks water, obviously sparkling an out of a glass with grooves carved into

it. she journals, briefly. she dry brushes. she takes the magnesium and the lion’s mane and the thing in the dropper that no one can pronounce. she opens her oura ring app and goes “interesting.” it is, by the seventeenth second, a more accomplished morning than most of us will have all week. her shirt is white. her dog is photogenic. her counter is marble.

i don’t know what’s in the dropper but i know what it is selling, which is: a person you can become, if only you would care enough to.

we have built an entire industrial complex around the first hour of consciousness. there is the morning routine, the morning routine of the morning routine person, the “no buy” morning routine, the “things i don’t do in the morning anymore” morning routine, the “ceo morning routine,” and most concerningly, the “soft girl” morning routine, which contains exactly the same supplements but with a longer pause before the cold plunge. the genre is so saturated it has subgenres. it is, statistically, what most healthy young people in this country produce instead of breakfast.

the trick of it is that none of this is care. it is content about care, which is a different thing. care is private and unphotographable. care is brushing your teeth half-asleep. care is eating the toast even though it is not aesthetic toast. care is going for a walk because something inside you said please.

the morning routine reel, by contrast, is performance. it is the worship of a self that does not exist before 7am for anyone who has ever had a child, a real job, or a feeling. and the cost of watching enough of them, day after day, is that you start to believe your actual morning bleary, beige, half a coffee, three unanswered messages is the thing you should be quietly ashamed of.

you should not be quietly ashamed of it. it is a morning. you survived to it. it is, in fact, a small and unromantic miracle that you are upright at all.

the perfection economy needs you to wake up wanting to be someone else. it has shareholders. that is the whole pitch, supplements, sleep trackers, $14 protein cookies, “founder energy,” a face roller in the shape of a tooth and none of it makes any money if you wake up and go, you know what, i feel pretty okay. so it has trained you, gently and relentlessly, to wake up and feel pretty not okay. to feel behind before you have even started. to feel that the route to being well is to spend $400 and to perform it.

this is the bit we are formally opting out of.

an honest morning, in our view, looks like whatever your morning already looks like, minus the shame. it might involve magnesium. it might involve the dog. it might also involve crying briefly because your inbox is feral and your back hurts. that is also wellness. that is, in fact, the substantive bit. the unedited middle.

so here is the permission slip:

you don’t owe your morning to anyone with a ring light. you don’t owe a routine to a stranger with sponsored content. you don’t owe consistency, you don’t owe progress, you don’t owe ten thousand steps before nine, you don’t owe anyone the version of yourself that exists only on the second take.

drink the water from the normal glass. take the supplement if it helps. skip the supplement if it doesn’t. open the curtains. close the curtains. wake up in a body that did its best yesterday. that’s the bit.

honest morning, honest day. permission to be human and imperfect.

love,
saolful.