(For the season…)
May 2024
I’ve been wrestling personally with my rhythms.
I have found a lot of support in routine – in doing things at certain times, at the same times, to stay in my rhythm or my flow. It gives my regularly panicking brain a break to know that “X will be done at Y time.”
I’ve realized though it’s not about the things I do – it’s about what those things mean to me and how I am when I’m doing them. It’s more the timing of the things rather than THE THINGS themselves that gives me the routine.
For example my mornings are filled with meditation, journaling, yoga, exercise, etc. I will do everything I can not to sign into a phone or computer until the VERY LAST SECOND…(and even then I find myself dreading it)
Not because I’m lazy or trying to avoid my work. On the contrary.
Because sometimes I find if I start work just a “little bit later”, I get so much more done than if I had started “on time.” Granted, this can be a slippery slope. I mean, I would way rather read a book than do pretty much anything else in the world so I have to be smart about this.
I know that just because right now, today, at this moment, I work best signing into work at a certain time – it doesn’t mean it will be like that forever. Or even the next day.
My body, my life, the seasons change.
Everything is changing. All the time. All around us. Within us.
Yet…
To any small change in my schedule, my panicked brain goes “You do X on Y day at Z time! That’s what you do! You can’t change it! How do you know it will get done if you change it?! Remember the last time you changed it?! It didn’t work out! You forgot to do it and remember dealing with that…ARUGH!!!!”
It’s exhausting to change. It’s exhausting on top of that to tell your brain to calm down and make the change. I don’t have kids but I’ve interacted with enough to know that my brain is a super over exhausted 2 year old who will cry and scream for hours on end. Every time there is silence it’s because she’s gearing up for the next round of screeching.
There’s the freedom of discipline, of schedule and of order. And there’s also the tyranny of it. Fine line – easy to cross. Sometimes I can put a foot in both camps at the same time.
I’ve been gently retraining my brain that it’s not a schedule. It’s a rhythm that we have at any given moment. And it’s going to change depending on all sorts of things: the weather, the people in my life, my work load, exercise, volunteer and social obligations and definitely what day of my cycle I’m on.
I usually have a good idea of what is coming – that’s what I tell my brain. But sometimes we are going to have to change, I remind it. This isn’t me slacking off…it’s going to happen, it’s just me trying to make things easier on getting all these things done. And yes, I have to be careful that I don’t change for the wrong reasons…(ie: because I want to, because I have 7 books I want to read, because I don’t want to go do the things I need to do.)
I find though that the more I give myself some slack, the more slack I need to give myself. I came down from an A+ a couple years ago thinking I was going to a B, but really I went down to an A. (And I’m .0001 away from that A+ again.)
My new ideas of what I can do for less stress and more ease in my life make me fear I’ll plunge to a C, but really, I know, I’ll be lucky if I go as low as an A-.
Anyone else out there with me on this?
When I start thinking like this, I know I need to focus more on my rhythms. Because I’m an adult who doesn’t care about grades. And who is this person giving out these grades? Do I even care? Do they care about me? Likely not.
So what are the things I do? But what are they in my day, in my week, in my month, my year that are keeping me in a healthy rhythm? With work, play, rest, connection all in what works for me?
I still do all the things – meditation, journaling, exercise, etc. Just moving it around is NOT the end of the world (“Do you hear that brain?”)
What are my rhythms for now?
Anyone else change rhythms depending on changes – either in seasons, in life, etc.? Is it just my brain that freaks out like this or are there others? (I wonder how well we’ve been brainwashed for this.)