Coffee for Breakfast, Chaos for Routine

 

Being in your 20s now is strange. Not because we’re lost — we know what we want, kind of — but because the rhythm of life is... off. Mornings don’t start with poha or paratha anymore. Most of us are just out here running on caffeine and vibes.

We call it independence. Our parents call it a crisis.

We skip breakfasts, we eat dinner late, we snack more than we admit. We sleep at 2 a.m., wake up at 8, and still tell ourselves “we got enough rest.” We say things like I function better at night while secretly watching our skin break out and our bodies fall slightly out of sync.

Then we visit home — and suddenly, it’s three meals a day, fresh food, and side-eyes when you reach for coffee before anything else. They ask you when you last ate fruit. You pause. They ask why you’re tired. You pause again.

And somewhere between that second serving of sabzi and your mom telling you you’ve “lost your glow,” it hits: our routine isn’t really a routine. It’s survival on fast-forward.

But this is what this decade looks like for so many of us. Trying to balance careers, deadlines, ambition, and somehow pretending we’re also taking care of ourselves. We trade sleep for goals, and meals for meetings.

It’s not always healthy. And it’s definitely not sustainable. But it’s real.

And maybe the point isn’t to fix it overnight, but to become a little more aware.

Because somewhere between that coffee-for-breakfast phase and a proper meal lies the space to care — for our bodies, for our rhythms, and maybe even for a slow morning again.