Tag: routine

The Vibe

The state of my mind, and thus the state of my writing, is all over the map, these last few days. Perhaps it is because a new season is starting, and we (my family and I) haven’t settled into our latest routines, yet. My middle son is home this weekend. He will move to another city, in a couple of months to start medical school. He, myself and my husband were out to dinner last night, and he was telling us about how he is more than ready to get started on a structured routine again. My daughter was on a date last night, and has a few graduation parties to attend tonight. She is eagerly waiting to hear back from some job applications. When I asked her the details of her parties, she rolled her eyes and sighed, “So much social time!” I smiled knowingly. I hate when the equilibrium my daily life feels out of kilter, and heavily leaning towards one activity, versus towards all of the other things, which I also want to do. I think this is just part of our human nature. We crave structure, and then we start to crave a break from our self-made structures. Finding that happy, healthy balance between regimented, systematic, in-control living, plus free-wheeling, up-for-anything, creative leisure time, seems to be a challenge for everyone who I know – young and old.

What’s your “vibe” these days, readers? Are you feeling a little unsettled as “normal” life opens up more possibilities to us every day, and our routines are changing? If nothing else, the pandemic really simplified our lives down the bare studs, didn’t it? Incidentally, the word “vibe” seems to be making a revival. A friend of mine had a job interview the other day, and the young, millennial manager wanted my friend to come into the workplace to see if she would “fit into the vibe.” Our group of friends (all from older generations), of course, got a lot of giggles out of the wording, and “vibe” became the joke word of the night. Of course, that same night, my 17-year-old daughter texted me to let me know that she was just driving around, “vibing” with her friends. They say that “your vibe attracts your tribe.” I like my tribe. They’re a great tribe. So, I guess my vibe is pretty good. Valencia (Twitter) recently tweeted, “Vibing with people who have the same goofy humor as you, is so therapeutic.” I giggled to myself when I read that quote. I was thinking about the fact that my tribe and I, made at least 67 jokes about the word “vibe,” when my friend told us about her interview story. And we laughed hysterically at all 67 goofy “vibe” jokes, as they seemed to get better and better, as the night went on. And Valencia was right, vibing with my tribe, who share my same goofy humor, and laughing hysterically, truly was, much-needed and amazing therapy.

37 Good Vibes Quotes With Images for a Happy Life - Darling Quote

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

I’m A Sloth

There’s a dead sloth lying in my pool area. (Either that or he is sunbathing) My dogs are brutal to their toys. I’m kind of feeling like their sloth toy right now. As you can see, I’m a little late with my blog post today. The taskmaster in me said, “Lady, you are not allowed to open up your blog page until you do those damn planks and sit-ups! And I mean it! Don’t you test me!” So the rebellious child in me, smiled sweetly and then meandered around and did everything else she could think of instead of exercises – tried on a new lipstick, looked for a replacement door latch on Amazon, sent funny, snarky texts to friends and relatives, and then, she even started doing not such fun things, such as bringing in the garbage cans, doing dishes, picking up soggy, germ-y dog toys (hence the picture) and even picking up dog do, to boot.

Why do I find it so hard to get back to my groove, after a trip?? It’s not like I was gone for a three week safari, six time zones away. It was just a long weekend away, in the same time zone. It was a long weekend of eating and drinking whatever I wanted (on a pretty much constant basis) without one mere glimmer of a thought about doing planks and sit-ups. It was just a four day hiatus from healthy living, and yet, trying to get back to my healthy norm has been nothing short of torturous.

My youngest son texted this morning that he has started doing a “prison workout.” I texted him back, asking him “WHY?!?” and meaning the question, at so many different levels. My son explained that one, he is not actually in prison (phew), or even preparing for prison (sigh of relief). He explained that the prison workout just works with your own body weight. Hmmmm. No wonder why I didn’t want to get back to my planks (at so many different levels). I had definitely added a few more pounds of weight to the workout, after the weekend that I just enjoyed and I just don’t feel ready for more weight to work with, in my current exercise regime. It’s the ultimate Catch-22.

Here’s the fortune for the day – “When an ordinary man attains knowledge, he is a sage. When a sage attains understanding, he is an ordinary man. – Zen saying

Meaningful Habits

This morning I got to thinking about rituals, routines and habits.

This is some information I found from the internet:

The difference between a routine and a ritual is not necessarily the action, but the attitude behind the action. To many, a routine is getting up every morning, eating breakfast, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, getting dressed, and going to work. … However, rituals are viewed as more meaningful practices.

A habit is an action we do often in a regular and repeated way. Routine is a regular way of doing things in a particular order. The main difference between habit and routine is that habit is a recurrent with little or no conscious thought whereas routine require a high degree of intention and effort.

I’m still a little confused.  I guess it is just a matter of degrees.  I got to thinking about all of this because my husband is on a business trip.  Because of this, our morning routines/rituals and our evening routines/rituals are shook up a little bit.

Our typical morning “routine” consists of my husband going to the gym freakishly early.  (He can have that part of the routine all to himself.)  When he arrives home from the gym, I saunter out to the kitchen, where our two youngest children are eating breakfast, gathering their stuff to head to school and either stressing about upcoming tests or joking about upcoming events, depending on the schedule.  I take out and feed our dogs and when I come back inside my husband has poured my coffee into one of our many mugs.  I like to think that he chooses “the mug of the day” deliberately and carefully as all of our mugs have some meaning to us.  We have collected them from vacations, our college, our children’s college, and sometimes just from quirky impulsive shopping days.  I recently purchased a mug that says, “T.J. Maxx is my spirit animal” on one of those more impulsive shopping excursions.

After kissing the kids and sending them on their way, we saunter back to our bedroom, where I read The Daily Skimm, some headline stories and our horoscopes to my husband while he gets ready for work.  After he leaves, I head out to my desk to start writing my blog.

I suppose that is just our morning “routine”, but considering how much I miss it when he is gone, I see it more as our morning “ritual.”  I have my own “rituals” when he is out of town, too.  Last night, we had Chick-Fil-A for dinner.  This meal is almost a given when my husband is out of town.  My kids put in their orders without even asking me “What’s for dinner?”  I also just reserved on Redbox a strange, indie documentary film for me to watch tonight.  I’m greatly looking forward to it and I am sure that my husband is relieved to not have to watch it with me.  We watch more traditional films when we are together, so I save my more “out of the box” film choices for when he is traveling.

Every year and every season our routines change a little bit.  I guess when what we do during a new routine becomes habitual, it becomes more meaningful to us.  When our habits and routines become more meaningful we see them more as “ritual”, almost becoming sacred to us.  I imagine if we really examined our everyday routines, our holiday traditions, our vacation and trip plans, etc. we would see just how much habit/routine/ritual plays into the big picture.  We usually don’t notice this, until a change-up occurs or when something unusual disrupts the flow, but it is really true that we are creatures of habit.  I think that the examining of our habits/routines/rituals is a smart thing to do, though.  Perhaps some things are just habits and perhaps they aren’t particularly meaningful or helpful or even healthy for us anymore.  Maybe little tweaks here and there to our every day practices could start a ripple effect, allowing even more creativity and excitement and anticipation to enter into our every day lives.  And at the very least, by examining the actions that have become like rituals to us, we can be thankful for all of the real meaning and comfort that we do have in our daily lives without even realizing it.