My Daily Routine

This couch is where I spend most of my days when I’m not teaching. And a good chunk of my nights, too.

March 4, 2024. Deepak Chopra just posted his “daily routine,” which begins at 4 am with two hours of meditation and yoga and ends at 9 pm with visualization of his death, which gets him “to that place in awareness that is beyond birth and death.” Deepak’s routine made me reflect on mine. Here is what I did on a pretty typical recent Saturday in Hoboken, my hometown. –John Horgan

2:00 am-ish. Wake up needing to piss. Too awake to get back to sleep. Go into living room, check email. Richard, my grouchy chemist/physicist pen pal, sent me another article on how you don’t understand anything unless you can model it mathematically. Ugh, do I have to write another column on that bullshit?

Still not sleepy. Watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I just started binging from beginning. Larry and his wife have dinner with Bob Odenkirk, who tells stories about his days as a porn actor, upsetting Larry’s wife. Funny, but making me too agitated to fall back asleep.

Back to bed, open Kindle, read a little Hydrogen Sonata, sci-fi by Iain Banks. Hard to keep track of characters, humans, humanoids, androids, avatars. Intelligent spaceships with funny names, like “Contents May Differ” and “A Fine Disregard for Awkward Facts.”

Piss again, back to bed, turn lamp off, close eyes, stare at inside of eyelids. Small animals—rabbits? hedgehogs?--float in and out of my field of vision. Should write a column on these hallucinations. Didn’t Oliver Sacks write about them?

Brood over death, melanoma. Need to finish melanoma column tomorrow. Can’t think about that now, will never get to sleep. Try mantra: D’oh. D’oh. D’oh. This ironic mantra never works.

6:00 am-ish. Wake up, make coffee, sip while lying on couch, feel surge of energy and enthusiasm. Should quit caffeine again, but morning rush so good!

Open spiral-bound journal to jot down deep thoughts on blank pages. Nothing. Write about having nothing to write about.

8 am-ish. Breakfast of yogurt, granola, half banana, my one virtuous meal of the day. Eat while checking Twitter, Facebook, email. Email from a crank, wants me to tell the world about his theory of everything. I have a hard enough time getting people to listen to my cranky ideas, man!

Finish grading freshman midterms, give them all good grades. I love these kids! Hope I wasn’t unfair to students I graded yesterday afternoon when I was tired and grumpy. This is why AI will take over teaching, AIs never get tired and grumpy.

Open draft of melanoma column. Spot on my back an overdiagnosis? That’s the question. Must finish damn column today, taking far too long.

10 am-ish. Go for run along Hudson. Young and not-so-young men and women fly past me. Twinge of PTSD when I pass the spot where I tripped and cracked my forehead open on railing. Grimace thinking that in another universe the rail probably smashed my mouth, shattering all my expensive crockery.

Noon-ish. Lunch of ham and cheese sandwich, garlic pickle, corn chips, chunk of chocolate for dessert. Meal for a king. Eat while watching end of Curb episode. Parents of Larry’s agent catch Larry watching Bob Odenkirk, in blond wig, fucking two women on porn video. Title of video: “The House Dick.”

Read more Hydrogen Sonata. Love The Sublime, supreme state of being, beyond ordinary space and time, to which mature civilizations ascend in Banks’ far future. Banks cleverly defines The Sublime by saying it can’t be defined. Like God or heaven. Write column relating The Sublime to mystical enlightenment?

Open melanoma file again, lethargy descends again.

2 pm-ish. Close eyes, wake up feeling lost. Where am I? Oh yeah. Hoboken, New Jersey, US, Earth, 2024. Wars, climate change, Trump. This is reality, not a bad dream.

Get off couch, lift barbells to get blood flowing, dispel grogginess. Pop a kratom capsule? Can’t, finished off my stash last week. Buy more from smoke shop near train terminal? Nah, no more, getting addicted to that shit.

Check email, Twitter, Facebook. Open melanoma column, shuffle paragraphs around. What’s the point? Even if I convince myself I’ve been overdiagnosed, I’ll get the spot carved out.

Get up from couch to plug in Christmas lights around sliding glass doors. Twinkly things cheer me up.

4 pm-ish. Look out sliding-glass doors at Hudson River, gleaming dully under gray sky, and Freedom Tower, rising above lower Manhattan. Feel obligatory gratitude that I exist, live in apartment with a nice view. Feel obligatory guilt for being privileged old white bastard.

Go to Aspen Market, pick up more ice cream? Nah, need to cut back on ice cream. Go down to the river to gaze at people, waves and gulls? Grok the miracle? Nah, drizzling now, need to finish melanoma.

Call “Emily”? Tell her I miss her? Nah, too needy, let her call me.

6 pm-ish. Time for dinner, and TV. Finally!

Microwave leftover spaghetti with meat sauce, sprinkle Kraft parmesan on it. Third night in a row, that’s okay, can’t have too much spaghetti.

Pop open Athletic no-alcohol beer, actually low-alcohol, less than 0.5 percent. Feel tiny buzz, maybe placebo. Am I cheating with this stuff? Sliding back toward booze after 15 years sober? Nah, chill out, don’t be such a Puritan.

What to watch? Maybe a movie? 2014 Godzilla just posted on Netflix? Nah, that’s the one with Brian Cranston overacting. Face-acting, Emily calls it, schmacting.

The Tourist season 2 is up! Watch first episode. Ugh. Awkward, chubby lady cop was cool in season 1. Now her twitchy schmacting is unbearable.

8 pm-ish. Sugar craving, time for dessert, peanut butter and jelly on crackers. Much healthier than ice cream. Surely.

Switch from Tourist to Warrior, Chinatown, San Francisco, late 19th century, martial arts and sex, fists and tits, hard to resist. Lithe Chinese gangsters kick asses of big Irish louts. Warrior makes me relate to Chinese guys, even though I’m an Irish lout.

Enough Warrior, back to Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry wrestles woman trying to check in before him with doctor. Hilarity ensues. Larry David is an asshole, but he’s righteous in his own demented way, and mindful. His irritability makes him see things the rest of us miss. Aggravation as enlightenment.

Call Emily? Nah, too late.

10 pm-ish. Wake up, realize I dozed through end of Curb episode. Go back and re-watch? Nah, time for bed. Turn off TV. Leave Christmas lights on, so room stays twinkly all night? Nah, can’t waste energy. Floss, brush teeth, piss.

Climb into bed, open Kindle, read more Hydrogen Sonata. Pages of clever banter, but no idea who’s talking or what’s going on.

Close Kindle, turn off lamp. Feel bad for not appreciating miracle of existence today. Each day a gift, my days are numbered, and I fritter them away. I’ll be dead soon, or worse, demented. I’ll do better tomorrow. Maybe drive north, hike up Anthony’s Nose.

Take another piss, so I don’t wake up at 2 again?

Finish that fucking melanoma column tomorrow.

At least I went another day without taking kratom.

D’oh. D’oh. D’oh.

Further Reading:

If you like this sort of thing, check out my book Pay Attention: Sex, Death, and Science.

I just posted—finally!—the damn melanoma column, titled “My Melanoma Melodrama.”

For a full list of free, un-paywalled columns on this website, click “About Cross-Check.”