My daily rituals…

I read a post over on Monsterlady’s blog today about her regular rituals. It got me thinking about my own daily patterns and how they affect me: this is food for a nice, easy-to-write post, and that feels just about right for a Sunday.

My daily rituals

Unlike what the featured image in this post purports, pretty much none of my ‘habits’ or rituals are definitively ‘good’. But they are what they are and, try as I might, good habits are not the ones I really stick to.

Morning

Each day starts with a ritual I call “do all my parts still work?” I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and put just enough weight on them to see if my knees or ankles hurt and/or collapse. I also spend some time ‘centering’ myself, clearing my mind a bit, and doing a bit of a mental inventory. Depending on how late I got to bed the night before, this can take a few minutes.

Next there is a bio-break (‘nuf said) and then off to the kitchen where I perform the “feed the hungry critters” activity. Three cats and a dog get a small dollop of wet (canned) food. The fourth cat, (Mag)Pie does not like canned food, so he just watches.

I try to verify with Irene whether she has already fed the beasts, but I can usually tell based on their level of demands.

Next comes the “making of the caffeinated beverages” ritual. I fill and turn on Irene’s kettle for her tea, empty yesterday’s coffee grounds from my coffee machine, put a new filter in, add four (4) scoops of coffee, add five (5) cups of water to the tank, rinse the thermal coffee carafe and replace the normal lid with the brewing lid, put the pot under the filter, and push the switch that starts the brewing process.

When the coffee brewing finishes, I remove the pot, turn the machine off, and replace the brewing lid with the normal lid. I rinse my coffee cup out, pour an adequate amount of cream in, and pour a quarter-sized dollop of the good stuff on the counter for Pie to lick up. Two teaspoons of sugar (down from three) and stir with the special long-handled coffee spoon I bought a few years ago. If Irene is up and has put her cup with teabag on the counter I will pour the now boiling water from her kettle on the tea for her.

The final step of my morning rituals is the “reading of the ‘news’“. This overlaps a bit with the caffeinated beverages activity as I’ll start while the coffee etc. are brewing. Reading the ‘news’ is actually a multi-step process.

I used to start by checking my Facebook feed. But during the Blaugust blogging event I’ve changed that up a bit, and instead check Discord for comments and new posts. Then I check my email and delete 90% of the fifty or so emails I receive each day as it is mostly marketing spam.

I follow this with a review of my RSS feed reader (Feedly), which I have populated with feeds from the BBC, CBC, multiple gaming sites like RockPaperShotgun and, during Blaugust at least, many of the participating blogs in the Blaugust event.

I’ve also added checking my Mastodon feed to news ritual during the Blaugust event.

Evening

Each evening I share with Irene the “TV watching” ritual. I used to do less of this, but spending this time with Irene makes her happy and I’m trying to be more cognizant of this kind of thing

Our TV habit has changed over the last couple of years. Lately we do a lot of series binging on streaming services. Most of the programs Irene likes to watch are lighter fare: currently we are watching Psyche. And unfortunately watching TV is often accompanied by a bad habit: “snacking too much“.

At some point Irene dozes off and I am required by our spousal pact to gently awaken her and escort her off to bed. At this time I also complete the “putting of the dog to bed” ritual. This involves telling our dog, Finn, that it is first “Time to put the puppy out“, which causes him to run to the door to be let out, followed by “Time to put the puppy to bed” when I let him in, which caused him to go to his crate, lie down, and wait for his bedtime snack.

Once Irene is settled I then start my evening “reading of the ‘news’“, followed by the “watching of the Youtube videos“. The videos I watch come from Simon Whistler’s catalogue of channels (too many to list, but Megaprojects is one example) and several gaming channels like GameRanx and WhatCulture gaming.

I still don’t have a real ‘blogging’ ritual or ‘exercise’ ritual, although I’ve been trying to find a proper place for both. During Blaugust my writing time has been ‘all the time I can squeeze in’.

I used to include the “playing of the video games” ritual in the evening, but this is so infrequent lately that I can’t really think of it as a habit any longer. Most gaming these days is sort of an episodic all consuming thing: when a great game comes out it becomes a ‘whole day’ thing, with my habits downgraded in importance in the interim.

How disrupting or changing rituals effects me

I tend to get slightly anxious or a bit grumpy if I miss one of the daily habits I’ve noted above. It isn’t a real problem: I just carry on with my day, feeling like I’ve missed something important.

But the habits are ‘sticky’ enough that I try to incorporate them in my day even when they don’t really make any sense given what is going on. For example, if I’m on vacation on a beautiful tropical island I’ll still try to have my laptop along so I can read my news feeds.

I’m quite well aware that none of these rituals is really all that important. And I aim to do new and interesting things on a regular basis. But the daily habits have become part of my daily fabric for one reason or another. Being aware of them might encourage me to improve a few of them.