BEING MARK WAHLBERG

Oliver Roberts tries to copy the actor’s punishing schedule

By now I think we’ve all seen or heard about actor Mark Wahlberg’s ridiculous daily routine, recently posted on his Instagram, wherein he gets up at 2:30am and does an awful lot of workingout/snacking as well as making work calls and going to important meetings and spending time with his family, until going to bed at 7:30pm only to repeat the whole thing the next day. Since he posted it, a number of websites have run stories praising his discipline and willpower, and suggesting that Wahlberg-ish schedules are the schedules that inevitably lead to riches and possibly fame and that anyone desiring stratospheric levels of success should consider following his lead.

So, I decided to give it a try. For a day. Not that I necessarily desire riches and fame (Wahlberg earned $68m (R952m) last year). In fact, I crave obscurity, but for the sake of Very Serious Journalism I set my alarm for 2:30am, and this is what happened:

2:30am: wake up

WTF? Why are iPhone screens so bright?

3am: wake up

Shit. I must have hit the snooze button. I’m already behind schedule. By now, MW has been praying for 15 minutes. I quickly re-make the couch (I decided to sleep in the lounge so as not to frighten my wife by waking up in the middle of the night) and feed the cat, who is tremendously excited that I’m awake at this time and lures me into playing with him, whereupon I waste another 15 minutes.

3:15am: breakfast MW says he starts breakfast off with oats, peanut butter, blueberries and eggs, then he has a protein shake, three (three!) turkey burgers and five pieces of sweet potato. Even if I weren’t vegan, I can’t imagine gobbling down three turkey burgers at a quarter past the witching hour. Like, who does that? I opt for a bowl of bran flakes because the TV ads for bran flakes tell us that a healthy, regular gut makes for a successful (if a little smug) and go-gettery type of person who cartwheels into meetings and goes for runs on the beach.

3:40am-5:15am: workout #1 My gym opens at 4am so I use the extra 20 minutes to drink three espressos. Once at the gym, I notice that most of the guys working out at this time are those types of men whose creepily smooth/shiny faces indicate that they either can’t grow any facial hair or use a lot of moisturiser.

5am: post-workout meal

Feeling pumped, and mildly dizzy, I drink an actual, boner-fide protein shake, boet.

6am: shower #1

I have weird and not-veryWahlberg-like neuroses about showering at the gym (I’m just not comfortable being naked around other dudes — read into that what you will), so I head home but, of course, hit suicide-inducing traffic (cars containing people going to actual jobs and contributing to the good of society instead of seeing what it’s like to be Mark Wahlberg for a day). All of this is good news, though, as according to MW’s schedule this particular shower lasts 90 mins and, (a), showering for the length of an average movie is not something I’m interested in, plus, (b), considering SA is in a drought it would be irresponsible.

7:30am: golf I appreciate how difficult golf is, but it’s a game I dislike as much as I dislike the personality types who play it. Also, I am not a member of any golf club, nor is there a mini-golf place nearby that is open at this time and even though there’s a driving range quite near my house that is probably open at this time specifically for the type of person who plays golf at 7:30am on a weekday, the thought of sitting in traffic again sends me into a mild panic attack, so I settle down and do some reading instead.

8am: snack #1

This is the first of three entries that MW entitles “snack”, but he goes into zero specifics about what this entails. I eat a banana, have another espresso and spend the remaining time resisting the urge to go to bed.

9:30am: cryo chamber recovery

A cryo chamber is a pod you sit in that is so cold that if you had to stay in it for more than a couple of minutes at a time you would die. But, done properly, it’s really good for muscle recovery. It’s also stupidly expensive, but it’s important that I stick to MW’s schedule as closely as possible so I run a bath of cold water and lie in it and everything shrivels up. 10:30am: snack #2 Um … an apple.

11am: family time/meetings/work calls I don’t have children so I visit my mother. She’s out so I end up watching ’80s music videos between checking my phone for important e-mails (I don’t receive any).

1pm: lunch

It’s been 10 hours since breakfast, so my body thinks it’s 6pm and is devastated when I present it with a couple of peanut butter sandwiches. At one point, while bringing one half of a sandwich to my mouth, I notice my hands are trembling from all the caffeine I’ve been pumping into my body for the past 10 hours.

2pm: meetings/work calls

I make the MW beginner’s mistake of LYING DOWN to check my phone for any important e-mails and end up passing out and having a series of terrible dreams.

3pm: pick kids up from school

Like I said, no children. But I drive to a local school and sit in my car for about 15 minutes before I’m woken by the school security guard tapping on my window and asking me what I’m doing here. I drive away.

3:30pm: snack #3

A seed bar from a petrol station forecourt after spending R1,000 to fill up my fkn car.

4pm: workout #2

I go back to gym in a delirious haze and take part in a spinning class during which I’m almost sick because my body thinks I’m taking part in a spinning class at nine o’clock at night and just doesn’t want to.

5pm: shower #2

I’m so depressed about the fact that it’s 5pm and I already want to go to bed that I just stand under the shower and let the water run over me like characters in movies sometimes do to show they’re depressed.

5:30pm: dinner/family time

Worst dinner/family time ever. I sit unresponsive until my wife accuses me of being “distant” and we have a stupid little argument during which I’m too sleepy/detached to defend myself.

7:30pm: bedtime

I drift off puzzled as to how MW gets anything done with a schedule like this.