I am slowly crawling my way back to a routine.
I am a person who loves routine and daily rhythms. I don’t do a schedule. I hate time blocks and everything like that. Life is too unpredictable, but I like my routines. This follows that follows that.
I think that life is meant to be lived in a rhythm. We all need to know what to expect. What comes next. And recently life on the outside has seemed anything, but routine.
For now, my oldest son is still enrolled in the public schools and the messages are coming fast and furious and they are contradictory and confusing. Stress-inducing. Chaos. People are constantly changing plans, making plans, altering plans, and then scraping them altogether.
But, my house. I can make a sanctuary here.
The new school year is always a time to make new routines, new rhythms, new habits. It does seem like a fresh start, although I look at my routines as a return to myself.
I need the silent reflection, the certainty, the rhythm, and with four children I need to schedule it in to make it happen.
My alarm has gone off for the first time since March. Instead of wandering around in the morning, I am trying to be purposeful. It is challenging, but rewarding.
My routine is simple and maybe not as good as it could be. But, I am not someone who is willing to wake up at 6am to make it all happen. And, I am a work in progress.
I wake up and drink two glasses of water. This is something that I usually neglect in my hurry to get up and start the day, but it is so important. I definitely feel it when I haven’t had my water. I get light-headed during my yoga. I am queasy easily.
I take the dogs for their morning constitutional. I’d say walk, but it isn’t anything serious. We just walk up and down the road, a half mile jaunt. They get to do their thing, I get to stretch my legs and get sun on my face. Sometimes I can talk my husband or a child into going with me, but usually I am alone.
When I get back, I make my first grader’s breakfast and start my tea.
Then, I do my morning yoga. I have been doing Yoga with Adriene every day since June 2019. Sometimes I am exhausted and I do an easy, low to the ground practice, but usually I follow along with her Yoga Calendar. I know it sounds heady to do yoga in the morning, but I consider it a nice ease into my day. And, I have seen significant improvements in my flexibility just by doing 20 minutes of yoga every morning.
Here is where my new routine is falling apart. I would like to drink my first cup of tea while I do a bit of reading. But, right now I’m having my tea while helping my first grader with her Morning Meeting.
There are a lot of things to balance in this new routine. And, it takes time to find out what works and what doesn’t. I am restricted by things like homeschooling a first grader (a very hands-on experience) and by my own ideas, like time restricted eating (TRE), which is a practice that I follow where I don’t limit my food, but I limit the amount of time during each 24 hours that I consume it. Following the TRE I don’t eat my breakfast (or tea) until after 9am so that I can limit my calories to a 10 hour window (9am-7pm).
I will find my rhythm. Right now I am enjoying my tea with my first grader and going through the calendar. At 10am my kids are doing PE, which for her is CosmicKidsYoga and for the older 3 is basketball, riding bikes, or just going for a walk and I am eating my breakfast then. I am trying to figure out a way to add in morning pages or just a bit of writing to my morning. It helps me to organize my mind.
Do you have a morning routine?