Today's track: Not Everything Grows — Shakey Graves

Good Morning,

No real estate today. No rates. No MLS data.

Today I'm talking about mornings. Specifically mine — and the quiet, slightly ridiculous collection of habits that have made my days feel completely different than they used to.

Fair warning: piss pull-ups are involved.

If you read the Morning Wood issue, you know some of this already. But the short version is: I used to live in chaos. Staying up late not because I had somewhere to be, but because staying awake felt like the one piece of my day I actually controlled. Waking up exhausted. Showing up to things only halfway present. I thought that was just adult life.

It wasn't adult life. That was just my life.

The CPAP machine changed everything — and if you haven't read that issue, go find it. Once my sleep sorted itself out, everything else became possible. The habits I'm about to describe didn't exist before that. They couldn't have. You can't build a real morning when you're running on no sleep and borrowed energy.

This is the thing I keep coming back to. You don't fix your mornings in the morning.

I cut caffeine at 3:30 PM. Not 5. Not after dinner. 3:30. Because I want to be in bed by 9 — 10 at the absolute latest — and I want to actually sleep when I get there.

I eat between 3 and 7 PM. That's my window. After 7, I'm done until morning. The fasted stretch isn't about punishment — it's just that I feel better when my body isn't still processing a meal while I'm trying to sleep.

9 PM. Lights out. Done.

And then I'm up at 4 AM — not because I'm forcing it, but because my body is actually rested and ready. That's a different relationship with early mornings than I've ever had.

Water first. Before anything else.

Monday, Wednesday, Friday — a teaspoon of psyllium husk powder in four ounces of water. Stir it fast, chug it faster, chase it with more water. Read the Morning Wood issue. It's worth it.

While my coffee brews, I grab a small kettlebell and do slow circles around my body. Not a workout — just rotational movement, warming the joints up, getting things moving. Takes maybe three minutes. I feel the difference on days I skip it.

I keep a jaw exerciser by the sink. Every time I'm doing kitchen chores — dishes, wiping the counter — I'm chomping on it. Up and down. Strengthens the jaw. Sounds absolutely insane. My old self would've had a lot to say about it.

Speaking of my old self: I used to do pull-ups every time I used the bathroom. My friends gave them a name. Piss pull-ups. They worked, honestly — right up until my body got tired of being yanked into full effort contractions cold, every single time, and started registering a complaint. So now I hang. Just hang from the bar. Spine decompresses, shoulders open up. The alignment is better than the pull-ups were, and nothing hurts.

After I use the restroom in the morning, I rebound. Small trampoline, a few minutes of jumping. This one came from reading about the lymphatic system — the part of your body that processes waste and fights infection, and the part that has no pump of its own. It moves because you move. A few minutes of bouncing first thing and I can actually feel the difference.

Worth mentioning: my trampoline is right in front of a window facing the street. So every morning I am just standing there, staring straight ahead, bouncing, while people drive and walk by. Full eye contact. I've stopped wondering what they think.

Sun. Every day.

Bare feet on actual earth when I can manage it. The dogs and I get a walk in without fail. I read outside when the weather cooperates. I've become more deliberate about getting real sunlight early than I've ever been, and I've never felt more even. I think we're going to find out that sun matters a lot more to human health than we've been told. That's a longer conversation for another day.

Then there's Paul's Fruit Market.

I try to get a fresh juice most mornings. For a long time it was mango orange — hard to beat. Right now I'm in a beet, carrot, and orange phase. Earthy in a way that grows on you.

Food in general has gotten simpler. Lighter carnivore — steak, ground beef, burgers, things that are mostly what they say they are. No seed oils. Local desserts with ingredients I can count on one hand. Lately I've been adding fermented foods — kombucha, pickles. Gut health is the next thing I'm going down, and the early signs are good. I've also been snacking on raisins, which have nothing to do with fermentation but are genuinely underrated.

Less ingredients. Buy local. You just feel better.

One more habit that doesn't usually get called a morning practice, but probably should.

At some point I started deliberately curating what I follow on social media. Data centers. Crypto. Tokenization of real assets. Not obsessively — but when I'm in a lazy phone moment, I'm picking something up I can actually use. Some of the better threads in this newsletter started with something I read while supposedly just zoning out.

I'm building the feed the same way I'm building the morning. On purpose.

That's the honest version.

The old me thought deliberate people were uptight. Thought routines were for people who'd stopped being interesting. I went through days a little sideways and called it personality.

Some of my friends now describe me as one of the most deliberate people they know. That is a full reversal. And I don't say that as a brag — I say it because it still surprises me when I hear it.

There's more peace in this than the chaos ever gave me. I feel more even. More present. More like myself. And I keep adding things slowly — one habit, then another — not because I'm chasing some optimized version of myself, but because I keep feeling better and I want to keep feeling better.

I'm aging into health. That's the phrase I keep coming back to.

You don't have to overhaul anything. You just have to add something.

Pick one thing on this list. Maybe it's cutting caffeine earlier. Maybe it's water before coffee. Maybe it's two minutes hanging from a doorframe while your eggs cook. Maybe it's finding your version of Paul's Fruit Market.

Add it this week. Add another next week. Let them stack.

That's the whole move.

Warmly,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
OffMarket.deals | Property Partner Data Company

PS — If you're ready to put out some fishing lines and make some letter of intent offers, hit me up. We'll get the ball rolling.