Every other Tuesday, AJ Daulerio wakes up at 5.30am and meditates for five to 20 minutes before beginning his multistep daily journaling protocol: reading a selection from a poetry anthology, then a passage from one of his daily wisdom readers (his go-to is a heavily annotated copy of Leo Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom); writing his Fear of the Day and gratitude list, then sharing his spiritual takeaway in a note to his three kids.
After a banana and coffee, Daulerio trains Brazilian jujitsu before hitting a 9.45am meditation at Besant Lodge – a community center just below the Hollywood sign that once served as a meeting place for mid-century mystics – immediately followed by him leading a recovery meeting of his own through Zoom.
He goes to personal therapy at 11.15am, picks up his kids in the afternoon and spends the rest of the evening with them and his wife, giving him just a few hours at night to work on his advice column for Slate and the two books he’s writing.
