Our Morning Rituals for 2020, Vol. 3 – Annie Jo Baker

Our Morning Rituals is a lifestyle series in which the Attic editors and writers give us a glimpse of their mornings – what do they eat for breakfast? what products do they use? what do they read? As we revive the series for 2020 as all of our morning routines have drastically changed with the universal upheaval of the day to day, Attic contributor Annie Jo Baker takes us through the start of their day.

Photography by Annie Jo Baker.

I’m a simple, practical person. Mornings are for drinking coffee in gray dawn and trying to re-orient myself to a waking world before rushing into what I have to do that day.

Or. That’s what they were.

My brain is a soft and foggy mass held together with baling twine. It was Before, but now it seems like it actually has a reason to be.

So I ground myself with physical tasks. If I think too hard all of the time, I’ll lose it. I’ve always been a very heady person, who thinks too much but also not enough at all. But the meaning of life is to pet cats and do the dishes. It took me a long, long time to figure that out.

I don’t know when I’ll wake up. I always go to bed fairly early but with the medication I take coupled with my fatigue issues, I may wake up earlier or later than expected. I used to be up at 6am to be at work at 7, but now that varies every day.

I immediately check emails—I’m the emergency contact for some laboratory mice and I’m always afraid I’ll wake up to an email that they’ve all died in the night. They never have. If everything’s fine, I message friends for a bit before getting out of bed.

I give my guinea pig, Jason (that was his name at the humane society where I adopted him), his morning dry pellet food and refill his water bottle and hay manger, and then manage to get dressed and briefly scrub at my face with cold water to wake up. If I have some dry spots on my face, I’ll moisturize with my face moisturizer, and pluck at any facial hair that has recently sprouted (there always is).

By this point, my roommates’ cat, Dexter, is sticking his paws under my bedroom door. I let him in, and he greets his brother Jason with a wheezy sniff and dashes into my attached bathroom so he can drink water from the faucet in the tub. He always has a bowlful of water downstairs, but he vastly prefers tub water. I let him slurp to his heart’s content while I chug multiple glasses of sink water until I feel kind of like a person, and then water any of the houseplants that need it before heading downstairs.

Now, Dexter is probably standing by the laundry closet door in the kitchen meowing to get his food. I refill his food bowl and then start brewing a pot of coffee for myself and my roommates, if one of the others hasn’t already made coffee.

If my stomach is mad at me, I’ll wait to eat. Otherwise, I’ll eat immediately even if I’m not hungry, or I’ll regret it later when I crash. I usually just have toast, but if I’m feeling up to it, I’ll make oatmeal. If there’s leftovers, like curry, stir fry, or pasta, I may eat that instead. Who cares if you eat leftover tempeh bolognese at 8am? Certainly not me. If we have diet cola in the house, I’ll drink that with my breakfast. If not, I drink more water and grumble about how much I wished I had diet cola.

I try not to look at my phone while eating because too much screen time will give me a headache, but I usually fail at this and end up trying to catch up on what happened in the group chats while I was asleep.

When I’m done with my breakfast, I pour myself some coffee, clean up my breakfast mess, and go stand on the porch. I look at the small garden that I planted under the big hedges by our house, and think about what will happen to it when I move again eventually. I water the plants that need to be watered, pull up weeds if need be, and stare through the holes the insects and wild rabbits have eaten in my leaves.

Now, I’ll top off my mug of coffee and head upstairs. I check my emails once I’m sat down at my desk with my laptop open. If necessary, I’ll do any administrative tasks for work, and if not, I’ll do some hand sewing, embroidery, or cross-stitch. I’m from a family of artists, quilters, and carpenters, so I love repetitive, delicate manual tasks, and even though such work is a large chunk of my actual day job, I still do it as a hobby.

While I’m crafting, I’ll usually watch some lighthearted YouTube videos. I love seeing little windows into the lives of people who are sincere in their own weirdness, or just have soothing voices or a fun sense of humor. It lets me see a world outside my head without much commitment.

(At some point, I briefly go downstairs again to refill my coffee.)

If I’m going to the lab for work that day, I’ll go to the lab. If I’m not going to the lab, I’ll continue my hand crafts but while watching recordings of neurotrauma webinars for continuing education. If I’m out of those, I’ll put down my sewing and go read some literature related to what the lab is currently studying.

So begins my day.

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Annie Jo Baker is 23 and lives in Kentucky. They have a myriad of interests, including science, literature, and activism.