Every morning around 8:30 a.m., I take Tilly out. These morning walks are a welcome sensory reset all year round, but especially in winter, when they operate like a mild polar plunge. I shake off the sleepy haze and perfunctoriness of the morning’s pre-school activities and switch on for the day.
I am not a particularly regimented person. Some days I eat breakfast, some I don’t. I try to run every other morning, but sometimes life gets in the way, and that’s OK. Lunch might be at 11:45 or 2. I strive for a 9:30 p.m. bedtime, but some nights, relaxing with my husband or finishing my book supersede that objective. In short, I am an organized, motivated person, but am comfortable operating in windows rather than against rigid timelines. As a lifelong rule-follower, I suppose this is my way of getting out from underneath my own thumb. So while I might not be regimented, I am ritualistic. I repeat the same patterns day after day, in loose parentheses of time.
I realized the other day that the morning walk has become a kind of cue, a pattern launch. I take off my Mom hat and slip into a creative mode. Without realizing it, that walk has become a daily call to Mount Helicon.
What rituals do you have in your life that help you work through your days with more fluidity and control? What cues do you have to help yourself toggle from one mode to another, or from one role to the next?
Yours might be switching on the coffee maker, tidying the kitchen, or, like James Clear (about whose writing I have ambivalent feelings), pouring a glass with cold water — something he refers to, as a former athlete, as “a pre-game routine.” Pay attention to those cues. Burnish them. They might feel wafer-thin to the point of immaterial, but they galvanize us with minimal effort on our end. It’s not “OK, Jen, now I gotta rev up the old writing engine” but the subconscious, almost invisible, shift toward the keyboard as I make the return down my street and back to my desk with Tilly on the lead. I’ve written elsewhere that “inspiration will not always find you, so you must learn to be disciplined.” Cues put our feet in the stirrups even when we don’t feel like riding.
Finally, a deep groove into which to pour ourselves today as we think about the cues and rituals that make up our lives:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
Are the habits we are practicing today the kind that ladder up to the virtues we want?
Post-Scripts.
+I still think about this quote from actor Mad Mikkelsen all the time: “My approach to what I do in my job — and it might even be the approach to my life — is that everything I do is the most important thing I do.” Read my thoughts on it here.
+How to get started with writing.
+Is pressure a choice?
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Shopping Break.
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+I love my Barbour (seen above) for daily walks. It’s surprisingly warm/insulating, works in drizzly weather, and has all these great oversized pockets for my phone, AirPods, keys, etc. Also succeeds in occasionally making me feel like a brooding British poetess.
+This $40 fair isle sweater is so good.
+Have I mentioned how much I love my desk chair recently? It’s sleek, comfortable, and under $300.
+I’m wearing this cashmere sweater in the snap above, but I also own and love this $100 one (go up a size!), also in a great chocolate brown hue.
+Obsessed with the rich color of this Ulla coat.
+This under-$50 pajama set looks very sophisticated.
+Perfect little gift for your fitness friend — the one who does the 5 a.m. workout with you, goes for walks in the dead of winter, etc.
+I love a fake dating premise for a rom com-type novel.
+How adorable are the patterns on Boden’s kids sweatshirts? Love the seagulls and puppies.
+Loving these patterned pajama-style trousers.
+I’ve always loved the look of Aurelia Demark’s heart-on-a-cord necklace — this style is under $100 and gets the look for less.
+Chic Missoni-esque dress.
+My friend Caroline was wearing this cropped textured Gap cardigan the other day and looked SO cute in it!
+Fun colorful alarm clock for a child/teen.
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