029. ...this concludes my morning routine...

(morning reflection)

The same morning routine has been bringing balance to my day for something like three years. Close to that anyway. This is the most consistent long term peace I've known. For the first hour of each day I follow, very closely, the exact same pattern unless I'm quite ill, away from home or something less obvious has impacted my life. Even on those occasions the routine still pretty much happens. In fact the consistency offers me an alarm signal or lead indicator, when my routine slips I know that something is awry in my Canada Dry, or rotten in my Denmark, or I'm not hitting my groove in one way or another.

It looks like this…

I get up, go to the bathroom, go to the kitchen and set up coffee making bits. I fill a glass of water, drink it, refill it and the kettle then click the kettle on. While the water boils I stretch and exercise. When the kettle clicks off three and a half minutes later I splash a drop of water into my cup to warm it, fill the aeropress and pour the remaining hot water into a large thermos flask for later.

I stir and cap the aeropress then exercise for another minute while it brews.

I drink the whole glass of water, plunge the aeropress and take my coffee to my desk and write in my journal while the coffee is too hot to drink. The cat will sometimes stand on my desk, on my journal and on my hands. On these occasions I draw a little paw print next to the journal entry. She's getting better at just lying on the desk beside me and there are fewer pencil pawprints in my journal. I'm mostly good with this. When we're finished with the journal we move to the armchair in the window and read.

I read, she mostly just purrs on my lap. I'll read for 40 minutes or so unless, like now, it occurs to me to write something.

And that's pretty much exactly how it goes broadly speaking.

Depending on the time of year I will see the sun rise during this daily routine. This autumn, in the morning darkness I've concluded that I much prefer the early summer light.

I try to read fiction in bed at night and non-fiction in the morning. Something edifying. This morning it was Seneca's Letters. It will often be the case that an idea in the reading will lead my head off into thoughts that I need written down.

Seneca at the end of one of his letters, sums up the whole of Robert Sapolsky's book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers and I remember that a while ago I'd decided to make some time to only read old wisdom. Both authors are essentially talking about the value and disbenefits of our ability to remember the past and imagine the future. But Seneca is more essential, more brief, spends less time explaining or doesn't make a thesis of something quite simple.

Which caused me to think about my morning routine, its brevity and value and the way it can be used to reflect on my past, predict my future and examine my present. I like the way my morning routine sets me up and goes a long way to defining me. My behaviour before 7am shapes my picture of myself as I progress through my day.

For example, I like to go for a run or to the gym later in the morning. I identify as someone who treats themselves to physical exercise every day. But sometimes life and circumstance get in the way of a gym visit or a run. Nonetheless I have exercised (albeit for less than five minutes) and therefore I am still the kind of person who treats themselves to physical exercise every day. My sense of self and identity are consistent. So my short burst of initial activity while the kettle boils is a nice failsafe.

My morning routine didn't happen by chance. I set out to create it. I knew I wanted more exercise, more knowledge and more peace in my life and I knew that when I leave these things to chance my best intentions fail or slowly drop away over time. By keeping a journal and tracking my habits I established that when I ticked boxes early in the day they were more consistently ticked over time.

Before my visible, out in the community, family and friends day begins, my quiet personal time nourishes me and sets me up to live the next 16 or so hours well. I've moved and activated my mind and my body and through either sunrise awe or quiet reflection I've nourished my soul. I mean that in a secular sense, call it whatever you like obviously, but I think soul is a nice catch-all.

As a bonus I like that Gus comes through and the first thing he sees is his dad reading. Unless I've gone to the beach in which case the first thing he'll se is my "Gone to the Beach" sign and the second thing he'll see is me sitting on the beach. When we talk in the morning we'll talk about our dreams or the things I've read or written. When a conversation like this concludes my morning routine I feel strong and full of energy.

For 44 years I had no routines of my own. Nothing purposeful or chosen to speak of. I coasted and let each day unfold as it may. I prefer life this way.

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I'm enjoying this and finding value in it so I'll probably keep doing it for a while. Stick with me if you like. Hit subscribe to get an email when I write something.

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…and let's hear about your routine.

Thanks for reading. X.