The Mourning Routine, or What Does a Good Morning Ritual Consist of?

When I can, I like to go a coffee shop in the mornings to clear my head.  

A few weeks ago I spent the day with someone who told me he has a morning ritual for awakening his artist spirit. Right now it's listening to Bittersweet Symphony. We're just channels, he says, and through this ritual he wants to become a proper conduit. Listening to Mozart and Beethoven are also good methods, he says. And he used to do other things, draw or exercise, to achieve the same end.

In a DietBet game I played, the leader wrote that she gets up at 5 am, listens to music, drinks coffee, and writes down her goals for the week.

I asked a friend if she has a morning routine, and she does. It takes about 45 minutes and includes extensively cleaning her teeth and identifying the things she's grateful for. 

This made me start to feel left out. My morning doesn't have a routine or ritual. Or maybe it does, haphazardly, if you call hitting snooze for 1.5 hours, brushing my teeth, then scrolling through Twitter lists for thirty minutes a routine. 

Oh, and food. Yes, eating some of that works its way in, as well. 

Their more deliberate morning rituals allure me. 

I've even idealized a good morning routine to be a superpower. It acknowledges the day as something special, and its capacity for things to happen or not happen depending on one's disposition.

I struggle with mornings, which is why I've titled this post "mourning routine". It's excruciating for me to even wake up before 7 am, generally. And the following morning hours feel like a slog. 

I've decided, however, that I need one. 

Although I don't entirely know what my morning routine should consist of, I'll plan to experiment with their routines, and hopefully work out something suitable. 

Do you have a morning routine? 

If so, what do you do?