- I do get nervous when I post,
not as often as I used to.
When you're able to be first
out of the gate with a position,
it can often inspire other people to come and join along
and that can be one of the most
impactful things in politics really.
Hello, Vanity Fair.
This is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
and this is everything I do in a day.
[upbeat music]
I am an aspiring morning person.
I want to be a morning person.
I'll do my best to be a morning person,
but I find that I stay up late.
I do a lot of my thinking late at night
and work late at night,
but I wish I was one of those 4:00 a.m., go for a jog,
happy as a clam. [chuckling]
During COVID, I admit I've become something of a night owl.
So I'll get up between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m.
Usually my dog is really cozied up [laughing]
he's little spoon. [laughing]
I'll usually have 5 to 10 text messages waiting for me,
sent at all points of the night.
I try to trim down on email as much as possible.
And so it's usually texts, Slack messages.
I can be a little bad when it comes to social media use.
Sometimes I'll check it right after I wake up.
I've been trying not to do that so much though.
If it's alternate side parking in New York City,
I put on my pants and some warm clothes
and I go move the car.
I actually just got a car
and I'm really lucky that I have not gotten a parking ticket
in the last two weeks.
But about two days or maybe the day after I got my car,
I did get pulled over for making a right on 23rd Street
when I wasn't supposed to, but I got a warning.
So that was good.
If I'm lucky enough to not need to head outside right away
I'll make a cup of coffee in my greca.
Breakfast, it's usually toast
with a little bit of peanut butter or almond butter on it.
Something to get some protein in pretty quickly
that or a smoothie.
I've been trying to drink less coffee lately.
So I switched to matcha tea in the morning
and I've had this little ritual.
I got a little milk frother.
I heat up the milk, I make the matcha.
The most important part of my morning routine
has been drinking water.
I like to put some lemon in my water
and I try to drink it pretty slowly and mindfully.
I'll look out my window.
I'll try to look at the clouds passing by,
just really slow down for even a minute,
five minutes in the morning.
And that's been my little meditative practice recently.
I will wash my face, put on some vitamin C,
moisturize and throw on some sunscreen.
I will go get dressed, read through some news.
Safari's my news app.
I go to The New York Times.
I'll check The Washington Post.
I'll look at long form articles in places like The Atlantic.
And then I look at some other
kind of less mainstream news outlets,
New Republic, In These Times, et cetera.
I've been trying to stay away from the phone a little bit,
but I do pull up my phone
and I look at my calendar for the day.
And then I'm usually out the door by 9:00,
9:30 in the morning.
I love my days in New York.
I love my neighborhood.
I like my neighbors.
It feels, I mean, it's home.
New York is home.
So, it's definitely more comfortable in New York,
but DC is beautiful.
And I love seeing my colleagues in person.
Here at home, I'll wake up
and I may have a press hit that day.
I may have things that I have to film
or I walk to my office.
If I'm in DC, my first order of business
is a committee hearing.
I'll walk over to the Capitol
for an oversight committee hearing
or a financial services hearing.
A committee hearing that starts at 10:00 a.m.
can last till 1:00 p.m. with a break.
And then oftentimes after that, Congress will call votes.
And so I'll have to prepare.
I have to read through my votes
and what we're kind of deciding on that day.
And then I'll head over and run to the Capitol
and cast my first vote of the day.
My breaks, if I get them,
[laughing]
are, kinda rotate throughout the day.
So pretty much wherever there's a pocket
between maybe an interview and an internal meeting.
Sometimes it's 11:00 a.m.
Sometimes it's 3:00 p.m.
Sometimes I don't get a break at all.
Sometimes I have a break
and then it ends up getting filled up with a meeting.
So, it's really any time between meetings
that I can squeeze in a little break.
That's when it happens.
For me, there's no regular set schedule.
Lately it's been Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, and Zoom.
[laughing]
But I will also be heading team meetings internally,
preparing and doing research for upcoming hearings,
talking through and workshopping legislation
that we're trying to roll out
and also talking to other candidates for office
and see how we can support other progressive folks
to be able to run for office and be successful.
A lot of what I and how I prioritize
has to do with what my community is prioritizing
and asking for in a given moment.
That also requires a lot of flexibility
and sometimes I will have to move things around
in order to address an issue,
whether it's police brutality
or whether it's taking out a stance on climate change,
so much of it and my job is responsive to what the public
and what our communities and people need.
Work never really stops.
As a member of Congress, you have to be on call 24/7,
especially for rapid response in breaking news,
you have to kind of set hard rules for yourself,
even though there's no off.
So I try to be done with work by 6:00 p.m.,
knowing that there'll be plenty of times
that I'll be working till 7:00, 8:00, 10:00 at night.
And so really the key to that kind of a demanding schedule,
I think, is flexibility.
I do my own tweets.
I do my own Instagram.
But we do have a team that helps with Facebook.
That's a little bit more writing intensive.
Sometimes my day is so busy
that I don't get a chance to look at things
until the end of the day.
And I'll look through and try to catch up on a few things.
I'll generally just kind of intersperse and see
if there's anything that we either need to respond to,
or that we should be speaking about.
Very often narratives, whether it's around social justice,
healthcare, raising the minimum wage,
acting on climate change,
policy will advance in news cycles
and there'll be very responsive to the moment.
And so it's really important to be on call
to help define the narrative and the message of that moment.
I do get nervous when I post,
not as often as I used to,
but especially if I know that I'm vocalizing a position
that has not been vocalized before
or vocalizing a position
that I may be the first out of the gate with
it's really nerve wracking.
But, the thing that is really special about it
is that when you're able to be first
out of the gate with a position,
it can often inspire other people to come and join along
and that can be one of the most
impactful things in politics really.
So if it's a light night and I'm lucky and I'm done by six,
maybe I'll be able to go out to dinner with my partner
or with some friends.
I'll take Deco, my dog, out for a nice long walk
in the community and we'll come back.
Later in the evening,
as I kind of do my whole self care routine,
I'll wash my face again,
I'll get ready for the evening.
I've been developing a habit of really awful
reality television to just totally unplug at night.
It's been actually pretty successful
in helping me forget about everything that's going on.
I've been watching, "Selling Sunset"
[laughing] lately.
Around 10:00 p.m. I'll check
if there's any other breaking news that has kind of hit,
if there's anything that I need to kind of brace
during the day.
Because very often,
if I walk out in the Capitol in the morning,
there'll be reporters asking me about a development
that may have happened at 1:00 a.m.
or midnight the night before.
You kind of have to intermittently check.
And so I'll check around 10 o'clock at night
or sometimes a development will happen late at night
and I'll kind of check in,
make sure if it needs to be responded to right now,
or if it can wait until the morning.
We try to have our phone off before getting into bed.
I'm a little more successful in DC
where I have a separate alarm clock.
In New York, I have to get another alarm clock.
And so, I have found that when we're able
to put away our phones before bed,
it's a lot more relaxing.
You're able to help yourself a lot more,
but I've definitely been caught
in some late night news cycles.
And that's just, it is what it is.
I'll brush my teeth, I'll change my Invisalign.
I'll wash my face put on like an inactive
and then I will moisturize my face and go to bed.
I hate going to bed early.
It's the right thing to do.
It's the responsible thing to do, but I'm just a night owl.
I feel like I'm getting FOMO by going to sleep early.
So my ideal bedtime is probably like 11:30 or midnight.
I'm a pretty good sleeper.
When I'm out, I'm done and I am asleep
until I wake up in the morning.
Thank you so much, Vanity Fair.
That's everything I do in a day.