A sample issue
From Calm Before Breakfast
Subject Day 1: You Already Know Who You'll Meet Today
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.
Marcus wrote this as an emperor bracing for a day of senators. You are bracing for a four-year-old who will declare the blue cup an act of war. Same idea.
His trick was not to hope for a smooth day. It was to expect the bumps before breakfast, so they arrive as old news instead of an ambush. The shoe that vanishes at 7:52 was always going to vanish. You just get to be ready for it.
And notice he doesn't say these people are bad. A little later in the same passage he says they act this way because they don't yet know better. Neither does a toddler. That's not a crisis. That's the job description.
Try this today: Before anyone else is up, name the one moment most likely to go sideways, and decide now how you want to sound when it does.