Keeping up with the Wahlberg
I have a standard, daily routine. I get up around 6 a.m., get myself dressed, make an egg sandwich on an English muffin, drive an hour to work, work, drive an hour home, get ready to do it all again.
It’s not overly exciting, which is why reading Mark Wahlberg’s daily routine on the internet has me so, so rattled.
Mark Wahlberg is the world’s highest paid actor. He has the physique of a superhero. He is wildly successful. We are in no position to judge Mark Wahlberg. But we will.
Have you seen this schedule? It is quite a to-do list and you don’t even have to read the whole thing. Pick anything on the list and you’ll be shocked and awed at the activity, the duration, the time of day or all of the above.
Start at number one. He wakes up. At 2:30 a.m.
Yep. I’m out. If I ever thought about patterning my life after Mark Wahlberg, I am lost before I ever get out of bed. If my routine ever lists waking up at 2:30 a.m., it would be followed by “Use washroom” and “Go back to bed” and “Remember none of this tomorrow.”
I shouldn’t make fun. Mark Wahlberg and I are the same age but I feel like we would never be confused for peers, colleagues or buddies. He’s in shape. I’m a shape. And at my age, maybe I should be taking my routine more seriously. I work with someone celebrating a birthday this week. She’ll be 41. She said she woke up in a sweat the other night with the realization she only has 20 good years left.
I thought about where I’m at in life and told her she might only have seven, maybe eight good years. That’s not true, of course. We all know that 60 is the new 50. The only problem: 50 kind of sucks too. Unless you’re Marky Mark. If you have not checked out this guy’s routine, do it. I mean, you have to find out what a person does if they wake up at 2:30 a.m. They do a lot. He prays, he eats, he works out.
According to the “typical daily schedule” that Wahlberg posted to his own Instagram account, he showers for 90 minutes then golfs for 30. What? No one golfs for 30 minutes. That’s like two holes. By 11 a.m., when I am normally reaching for a nice piece of fruit, Wahlberg has had his fourth meal of the day. He has seven in total to go along with two workouts and two showers. It’s all too much for me. It is for him, too. By 7:30 p.m., he’s shutting it down. Again, far be it for me to judge what someone else wants to do with his life. There is no right or wrong when it comes to this stuff. But he is dead wrong. And weird.
Maybe he just dislikes his family. I mean, he does have family time in his schedule. It’s combined with meetings and work calls. But why else would he roam the gym at night and go to bed right when the rest of us are settling in for “Dancing with the Stars” or “The Bachelorette?”
Sure, Mark Wahlberg might be doing hours and hours of weight lifting, soul searching and eating before I even get out of bed — but he’s missing out on a lot. It’s 8:20 p.m. now. He’s been in bed for nearly an hour. In that time, I went to the store and picked up a giant box of Maltesers. Giant. Do you ever do this? It says on the box, “200 calories per serving. Servings per container, nine.” And I start doing the math. How many calories if I just crush this whole thing tonight? What if I stop myself at half a giant box?
We don’t just eat and watch TV while Wahlberg snoozes and loses. Right now, my wife and her friends are in the house learning to play the ukulele. They call themselves the “Ukeladies.” I can hear them in the basement strumming out some “Down on the Corner” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”
Wahlberg? Zzzzzz.
Sure, I’ll do the same old egg on an English muffin and drive to work routine all week. But on the weekend, I’ll shake things up. I’ll eat an egg on an English muffin and go, not to work, but golfing. And I’ll put in more than 30 minutes.