Topix Questions 19 "First Hour of the Day" & 20 "Is the World Loving, Hostile, or Indifferent?"

Question 19/424:  Describe the first hour of your typical day.

On a regular workday/weekday my alarm goes of at 8am.  A few years ago I stopped using my phone as an alarm clock so I actually use a small cube type one that all you have to do is hit the top to snooze it.  I typically don’t snooze though because my boyfriend doesn’t appreciate the alarm going off multiple times in the morning.  Sometimes, if I’m feeling especially snoozy, I’ll take my alarm clock out to the couch and sleep there for an extra 5, 10, or 15 minutes depending. Eight o’clock AM probably sounds late to most people but I don’t take a long time to get ready in the morning and I only have a 15 minute commute to work.  I am not a morning person so getting up earlier to “accomplish things” has never worked for me, I’ve tried getting up at 7 to go to the gym before work or even just do a load of dishes before work but that just makes me a zombie for the rest of the day.  I am much better suited for just staying up later to get things done and allowing myself the freedom to sleep until 8am.

As for a morning routine, it’s pretty basic.  Once I commit to being awake the first thing I do is go into the bathroom to do bathroom things:  brush my teeth, brush my hair, etc.  After bathroom things are done, then I get dressed.  Sometimes I lay my clothes out the night before to make things easier but sometimes I just go into my closet with my phone’s flashlight and make the best of it.  My boyfriend doesn’t always get up at the same time as me so I avoid turning on the bedroom light.  Once I’m dressed I go over to my boyfriend and let him know I’m almost ready to leave.  I started doing this when I was making daily shakes because I figured he’d prefer to be woken up by me versus the sound of the blender mutilating ice, but I’ve fallen out of the shake habit lately but I still wake him up before I go into the kitchen. 

While I don’t necessarily make the shakes every morning, I do need my caffeine.  Coffee messes with my stomach too much, so instead I make my “tea”.  I call it a tea because I started making it as a dupe for the Herbalife Loaded Teas I used to pay way too much for every morning back in 2019/2020.  The tea is just a cup mostly filled with water, then I add a caffeinated drink mix called Pure Boost, I prefer the Berry Boost flavor most of the time, then I add some Mio or Crystal Light syrup, top the cup off with ice then add a straw and the lid so I can safely carry it into work.  I actually bought a set of cups I use specifically for this purpose, it’s a set of five in various colors and sparkles.  I learned a few years ago that unless my drink has a straw, I probably won’t drink it.  Once my drink is made, assuming I don’t have anything ready to grab and go to eat, I move on to putting on my socks and shoes and then grabbing all of my essentials before walking out the door.  If I didn’t make my own breakfast then I’m probably going to go through a drive-thru or go pick up a protein shake depending on how I’m feeling. 

Weekend mornings vary as I’m sure they do for most people.  I used to be able to sleep in pretty late but in the last few years I’m pretty much unable to sleep in past 10am.  I know 10am sounds like a luxury to those who get up earlier in the week or have children.  I’m usually up by 9am and I still brush my teeth first thing and then make my caffeinated tea.  After that I don’t really have much of a routine.  If I don’t have plans then I usually don’t do much of anything in the first hour of the day, unless I’m not caught up on Good Mythical Morning and then I’ll watch that.  Otherwise, the first hour of the day goes by pretty quickly.  If I have plans for that day I’ll usually focus my energy on getting ready, or at least planning out any outfits or cooking that has to be done for the plans.  I’ll also usually get right on top of any necessary daily chores so that they’re done and I don’t have to worry about it.

That’s pretty much it.  I consider myself pretty low maintenance and I think my morning routine confirms that.

 

Question 20/424:  Is the world loving, hostile, or indifferent?

If I must generalize my feelings on the world by choosing one of these three words, then I would choose hostile.  I think in modern day America, the world, and society around us are generally not hoping to see other people succeed.  I think nowadays it is much more difficult to be successful.  Personally, I feel like people can’t do anything without someone finding a reason why that thing is unhealthy, damaging to the planet, offensive, or simply societally unacceptable. 

Growing up, my parents made it very clear that we should never expect help from anyone, including them.  My parents were self-made, and they reminded us of that every day by being self-employed and working their asses off my whole childhood.  I remember my dad would tell us that the reason he wanted his kids to see him working hard jobs that no one wanted was so that we would aim for bigger and better.  My parents made it very clear that they wanted their kids to be more successful than they were – but that we were going to have to accomplish that goal on our own.  We were very much raised with the “brush it off” mentality.  If something went wrong or was difficult, we were essentially just told to figure it out.  I’m not saying they were necessarily dismissive but at the same time, my parents couldn’t really help us with schoolwork, so if we needed extra help, it was our responsibility to find those resources and make it happen.  If we wanted to go to college, we knew that we needed to apply for scholarships and keep our grades good because our parents were simply not going to be able to afford to pay for our tuition.  If we didn’t like a teacher or a coach, we were told that we had to figure out a way to work with them because in life you don’t get to just quit your job because you don’t like your boss.  We were taught from a young age that it’s a rat race out there and if you don’t keep up, then you fall behind, and it was as simple as that.

I don’t know if I would necessarily say that my parents were 100% right about everything, but I think entering adulthood believing that the world wasn’t going to help me encouraged me to be self-sufficient.  Despite this, there have been multiple instances in my life where I have in fact needed help and I was fortunate enough to be able to get that help.  Whether it be by favors or loans I’ve managed to figure out how to keep my head above water.  But I don’t think that is the normal, and I consider myself very fortunate to have a number of people around me who I know that if I was truly between a rock and a hard place would do whatever they could to help me out.  But I have a lot of privilege being a young white female.

I know privilege is a tricky work for people.  People seem to think that if you have privilege then that means you haven’t had struggles, but that’s not what privilege means.  The fact is I came from a well-off family with a lot of opportunities available to me.  I truly believe that if I had been less well-off or of a different race then the world would probably have been much harsher to me.  Even with my privilege, the world can still be quite hostile.  The fact is most people are more preoccupied with maintaining the status quo or the bottom line than humanity.  That’s why you see all these law makers trying to strip rights away from the groups that focus more on humanity.  There is so much violence in our world these days and I truly believe it stems from a place of absolute hopelessness.  People who work hard are still only scraping by and that is extremely discouraging.  I know plenty of people who are so far down that they would love nothing more than to just watch the world burn.  I think that in and of itself proves that the world we’re living in leans more towards hostile than it does towards indifference or especially love. 

I try to keep hope that our world could change and shift and become a less hostile place, but people have to start thinking about others and the future first and themselves and their present second.  It'll be a hard shift, but I think if we were able to accomplish that, we would see a massive difference in our world.