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.