morning rituals

i read this morning that 15 minutes of meditation a day can have a great effect on the brain. and i'm thinking, i want my 50ish-year-old brain to operate like a 25-year-old one, as far as the functioning of the old grey matter is concerned. i don't recall searching for words at 25, so yes, bring that on. and it got me thinking about my morning ritual. it mostly consists of picking up my phone to see what madness the spray-tanned buffoon came up with overnight. i normally watch colbert and trevor to get their take on it - i find it hard to take it directly, i need it filtered through intelligent humor. then i turn off my sleep cycle app. then i get up, pretty much making the bed as i get out of it. i'm a bed maker, i think it's the one small ritual that sets the tone for your day. if you leave a neatly-made bed, there's a good chance of less chaos in the day that stretches ahead, even if the cats come along and lay on it during the day, leaving little hollows here and there. our cat bob won't lie on the bed unless it's made and if it's not, he'll come along and stare disdainfully until you make it. and i always make the bed.

next, i make a cup of tea. if it's the weekend, i'll make a pot, or rather husband makes a pot and brings me the first cup of tea in bed. that's a ritual that i love. but things sort of fizzle out from there. i sit down in front of the computer, checking mails, reading articles and blogs, fiddling around on pinterest, maybe writing a blog post like this one. mostly wasting time, if i'm honest. lately, i have australian master chef playing in the background, so i'm also half pondering what's for dinner later in the day (hmm, can i get squid somewhere nearby?).

i'm not sure any of these rituals are helping my brain very much, nor are they getting me regular exercise or making me more organized or helping me figure out what's next.

and speaking of my quest to figure out what's next, i've undertaken a major clearing out in our "box room," where we stashed all the boxes of books and stuff we didn't have room/shelves for when we moved here nearly a decade ago. i'm ruthlessly tossing lots of things that we haven't missed, but admittedly i probably should be even more ruthless about it. i'm hoping having that room more organized will create space in my brain for better habits that move me forward. so i guess i'd better get cracking. but first, maybe 15 minutes of meditation?

what if the water is fine?

my most recurring dream scenario over many, many years is of falling into dirty, brackish water that i fear greatly until i'm in it and discover it's not as bad as it looks. every time, i can swim, or touch bottom, or it's much more shallow than it appears and not nearly as muddy as it seems it will be and i don't get stuck and tangled up in those plants. it hit me today from something a colleague said, that we choose our path, balancing precariously on the edge of that nasty-looking water, worrying about falling in or we give ourselves over and jump in and see what it's really like. and there's a very good chance that it's not as bad as it appears. and maybe we make it worse ourselves, for ourselves, by imagining how bad it will be. and trying to make cynical, sarcastic jokes about it. and maybe we should stop that and look for the good. because there is a lot of good. and maybe, just maybe, it will all be ok if we just relax and be grateful and positive and give ourselves over instead of resisting with cynical sarcasm. and by we, i mean me. and it may not be easy, but i'm going to try. just maybe that water is fine.

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linguistic delight - book reviews from prison.

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why mall of america doesn't die.

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please, dear odin, let him run.