During a recent visit to my sister’s, my niece asked this question during dinner: What would be your perfect day? We could do anything we wanted, she assured us. As everybody took turns answering, I was surprised how they all struggled coming up with a good answer for this. They hesitated, doubted and stumbled over their words. It was too hard a creative endeavor, coming up with a whole day-plan just for themselves, and I quietly chuckled at their lack of imagination.
On my turn, I quickly found this a much harder challenge than initially anticipated. While I could invent this crazy day filled with adventures – go skydiving, be king for a day, drive a Ferrari, travel to an exotic country, and party with celebrities at night – something in me (and the others I suspect) wanted to create a more realistic take. I wanted this day filled with personally meaningful activities. Problem was, nothing immediately came to mind. For a guy pondering and wondering excessively about everything and nothing in life, filling an entire day with meaningful activities still eluded me.
Provoked by my own ineptitude, I decided to spend more time on this. I want to engage in more things that are meaningful and joyful, and not only things that surprise, annoy or trouble me. My niece’s question showed me I haven’t done a good job at the former.
So here goes. My perfect day breaks the laws of physics and geography, to land me in the right spot at the right time. I will allow this.
6.00 AM: I wake up early in my own apartment. Although sleeping late was treated like a sport in my teens, for the last ten years, I have been an early riser. There is something about mornings to me: The city hasn’t woken up, everything is quiet. No emails or clients have ruined my day yet and for a brief moment in time, all is new and my day filled with promise.
I handgrind my coffee and make a slow pour-over coffee. I sip this at my kitchen table while logging thoughts in my notebook. This pretentious ritual keeps my mornings slow and my eyes away from any black mirrors. It is mid spring. If anybody spent the night (there would be – this is my perfect day after all), they would still be sleeping, allowing me to have this time for myself.
7.00 AM: I go to workout. This might seem insane to someone – more like punishing than treating yourself. But working out keeps me sane, and is one of the most important tools I have for getting out of my head and into my body (god knows I spent enough time up there as it is). Taking this time sets the tone for the rest of the day – missing it degrades it significantly.
9.00 AM: Back home again, and my overnight guest will have prepared more coffee, put on a vinyl and made breakfast. Homemade sourdough bread soaked in butter with aged cheese and a classic French omelette with tomatoes and basil. I have a serious love affair with bread, my favorite carb by a mile. If it were feasible to live on a diet consisting of only bread, olive oil and red wine, I wouldn’t consider it a life wasted.
10.00 AM: A shared shower, fresh set of clothes, and then out and about to a city blooming in the sun. We visit a vinyl shop where, naturally, I find that album I’d been searching for forever. Soon after, by some magic wonder, I find that one jacket I’d been eyeing for so long at half off the price. We end up by the water, where we just zone out with a drink in hand. Copenhagen is somewhat famous for its clean water, and everybody chills and dips at selected sites all around the city, making for a great mood and scene.
12.00 PM: Time for lunch and to leave Copenhagen. 235 Mulberry Street in New York is home to Rubirosa, which makes some of the absolute best pizza I’ve ever had. Their vodka tomato sauce is to die for, and whenever I am in New York, I always pop in, sit at the bar, and hang out with a pie and a beer. It’s honestly a toss-up between this or Ivan’s Ramen, but since I stole a whole bunch of chopsticks and spoons for my own ramen set at home the last time I was at Ivan’s, I figured to stay away for a while and let the dust settle on it a bit.
14.00 PM: Snack time is coming up, and we magically find ourselves in Bologna. While I could easily have based an entire day just in Italy, for now, I will borrow only one element from this magnificent culture: Their gelato. There is a shop in Bologna which makes it with local ricotta, mascarpone, milk and cocoa, and it might be the best gelato I’ve ever had, so I can’t create a perfect day without it.
16.00 PM: As we’ve done it twice, we might as well do it thrice, so we travel to Budapest. Settling into our hotel, five star in the middle of the city, penthouse room (because why not), we’d open a bottle of sparkling and have wild passionate sex on the balcony overlooking the city, because what better time to be a little frisky than on top of a European capital in the sun, with champagne in the cooler.
18.00 PM: Why Budapest of all the places? A few years back, I went to Budapest with my then girlfriend, and we’d booked a table at the Borkonyha Winekitchen restaurant. To this day, it remains the best meal I’ve ever had, and to top it off, the best wines and wine pairing I have experienced. The seating was perfect – our own table a little apart with a view over the whole restaurant; warm, great service, talking and laughing all night long, slowly getting more and more tipsy on great food and excellent wine. This is certainly one of the finest memories I have involving alcohol.
Aiming to repeat that experience, Borkonyha Winekitchen would seat us at six o’clock, same table, same waiter. The next 4-5 hours would be in their hands and if my past experience is anything to go by, this could easily be the best part of the day (bar all the balcony sex) and a wonderful ending to what would be a perfect day.
11.00 PM: We walk home to the hotel, preferably crossing one of the bridges, hand in hand, bathed in the night-lights of the cars and the city, overlooking the water, tipsy, warm and satiated in every sense.
Writing this, I realize my perfect day is not about making up new stuff, but drawing from fond memories of experiences I’ve had already. All my best memories are rooted not in how much money I’ve made, what clients I’ve landed, what apartment I live in or what furniture I have. They are rooted in experiences I feel safe and comfortable in, usually filled with food, and surrounded by people who value and treasure me. Although intuitively knowing this, writing it down made it crystal clear to me.
Also, four months into this experiment, and alcohol still seems an integral part of these experiences. I feel like my sobriety, paired with the reflections in this blog, is allowing me to put some distance between myself and the destructive patterns I was engaged in. But I can’t escape alcohol completely, it would seem, nor do I know if I want to. A cold beer to a bowl of hot ramen, the perfect red wine paired with roast lamb – I have still to figure out if the perfect day is a day when I can finally drink with moderation, or a day so good I wouldn’t care about the consequences of breaking my sobriety.