When I say a sunlit morning, what do you think of?
Unstructured time? Lazy hours in bed?
How about snacking on something delicious? What about your favorite dish?
A really good drive somewhere. Listening to new music that you love.
When I ask you who you want to do all these things with, is it another person? People?
Or just you?
“We’ll take a slow morning. Grab a coffee. Go for a long walk along the water. Maybe check out the market - I know you’ll love the sculptures at the market, Jenna. Then I’ll take you to my favorite place for dinner.”
•
I spend a lot of time with people who are so obsessive about prioritizing this kind of life.
And it’s also very true that these same people who are so obsessive about these kinds of slow mornings are the same ones that need to be reminded emphatically to take more of them.
Work hard, play hard? They’re my people.
It’s me, too.
I create it for others all the time and I also need to create it more for myself.
Work hard, play hard sure.
But what about just…
…
…how do I describe it?
I go back to the beginning. The feeling of a snow day.
Crisp cold sheets and piles of blankets on top of me in bed.
Everything’s quiet outside, sparkling. No one needed anything from me. I didn’t need anything from anyone but just a few more minutes, warm, curled up and nested like a little animal. Breathing.
•
This is catnip for my heart -
Likely you have your own version of it -
A slow, chill day that you really need.
A person that you want to spend it with, or a glorious rabbit hole away from the universe into a different headspace and time - alone.
I love the person that I am when I have this kind of time. When I’m without it, my inner monologue whines about wanting more of it, and then my continued inner monologue whines at me about whining about it.
How can I put this… okay, here’s a metaphor:
Given that I’m now accidentally one of Barcelona’s experts on coffee, I’ve realized that I prefer to take mine with cinnamon.
It just feels a bit extra to dash a little on the top. I then have AI tell me all the health benefits of cinnamon.
Too often we treat this “slow mornings” kind of time like it’s cinnamon - a spice.
A nice-to-have extra.
•
“I want to run my schedule like someone in the army.” I say often.
If I become so regimented with my time, I tell myself, I can free up more blocks of it that no one can fuck with, except me.
It’s good in principle, but then I also think about the other day when I woke up and, upon receiving really cool news about a project that I’m on, decided that I deserved a day off.
I had a friend staying with me at the time so I proclaimed that it was a day off, enjoyed a coffee (with cinnamon), and then sat there and thought to myself:
Okay, now what.
I ended up being productive. I spent the morning filling out a year’s compass for last year. If you don’t know those exercises, they’re really helpful and this one no doubt was.
But my day off was a total fail.
I should have gotten the f out of the house and taken my coffee down at the beach.
I should have sat in that spot that I love on that concrete pillar and watched the waves come back to Barcelona from Mallorca.
Maybe picked up my favorite sandwich from that Italian spot that I always recommend to people who are visiting.
I do this all, often. I live in a city that is built for it. But it’s never enough.
It’s never enough for any of us, because we all need more of it.
There isn’t a single person I know who doesn’t need more of it.
•
The pillows were this crisp white. The sheets very smooth, like silk. The air was slightly cold and still.
It was early morning on Sunday, still dark out, but a bit of that pre-sunrise glow outside.
I listened to the silence, awake. Curled up in a ball, breathing.
Smiling a bit to myself about all that happened the night before.
It felt like a snow day, again.
•
What if cinnamon was essential?
What if I should never take my coffee again without it?
What’s your cinnamon?
What if this kind of spaciousness - this emotional time that we’re talking about here - was the essential missing component for so many of us in our lives?
I can and will continue to design incredible experiences for you, your guests, your clients.
They will profoundly change how you’ll see the world - yes.
But they’ll be so much more resonant if you don’t forget your own cinnamon.
Add the cinnamon, before you even find me.
Especially - my dear friends - these days.
Jenna
