The Routine is Fine

Notes on showing up for someone else

July 2025

This morning I flooded the kitchen.

Not in a dramatic, insurance-claim kind of way. Just enough water in the coffee machine to simulate a mild appliance-based flood event. I was midway through my usual routine: coffee first, fill the reservoir, grind the beans, start the machine. Then the smoothie, protein, fruit, leafy greens, dairy, and a dash of ground flax I’d defend in court if necessary. Hit the blender. Feel quietly virtuous.

Then I turned to find water bubbling out of the machine like a polite little geyser, soaking the cutting board and inching toward the fruit bowl with unnerving confidence. I mopped it up with the nearest towel, which was mostly decorative. The kitchen smelled like espresso, spinach, and mild regret.

Marcus Aurelius would not have approved.

“First say to yourself what you would be,” he wrote, which I suppose excludes the kind of person who forgets how coffee machines work. I can picture it now. Marcus, not the coffee machine, sitting in his stone villa, journaling stoically as a servant silently replaces his coffee. No flooding. No spinach. Just stern wisdom and excellent posture.

And then there’s Jordan Peterson, who would no doubt trace the counter spill back to a foundational failure of character, possibly with roots in adolescence. I had not made my bed. I had not asserted dominance over the coffee machine. I had not arranged the cups by size and threat level. In his view, I had likely endangered civilization.

There’s an entire genre of advice for men like me, middle-aged, a little tired, still trying. We’re told to rise early, embrace hardship, sublimate desire, and reduce our emotional needs to lists. Twelve rules. Or seven. Or five. I forget how many you need to become a better man, but apparently it’s fewer than the number of ingredients in my smoothies.

Some of these books have titles like Make Your Bed, Fasted and Furious, or The Subtle Art of Not Crying. If you’re not rising at 4:45 a.m. to deadlift your feelings and journal about your five-year plan to out-alpha your shadow self, are you even growing?

There’s something comforting in the idea that virtue is a habit, that you can train your character like a muscle. I admire the discipline. The clarity. The ancient conviction that if you just do the right things in the right order every day, your life will add up to something noble.

But that’s not how my mornings work.

I bring Natalie coffee. I make her breakfast. We sit together and talk about our day, what’s coming up, what we’re avoiding, what we’re worried about. Sometimes we just sit in silence, which, if I’m being honest, is probably Natalie’s favourite part. She’s not a morning person. Anyone who’s met Natalie knows not to expect conversation before coffee. We’ve done this most mornings I’m not travelling, for years.

A famous study on happiness began in 1938 and followed hundreds of men across their entire adult lives, tracking health and happiness. And eventually, general human unraveling.

Decades passed. Thousands of studies followed. But the original finding still stands.

The number one predictor of well-being isn’t income, education, ambition, or kale.

It’s healthy relationships. Full stop.

The people you show up for. The ones who show up for you.

That’s it.

So I’m not saying “make the coffee, skip the Stoics.” But maybe start with the person across from you, the one who doesn’t need you to be optimized. The one who’s happy to see you, even if you’ve made a mess in the kitchen.

I dried off the counter. Natalie smiled when I handed her the mug. We finished breakfast quietly, then each headed out on our bikes.