I am rereading on of my Breathe Magazine Issues from Winter. They were so good! And I’ve had some trouble adjusting to time changes because with the heat I take my dog for a hike in the latest part of the day (I bike in the earliest part) and so getting back I brush him off (tick season, yay) and when brushing a black chow and doing a tick check this takes time. He thinks it is a massage. Thankfully being grain free and raw fed and black to boot he isn’t prone to much of this but I have found them attach to the fur and get in my house so I am being super diligent.

Then I need a shower and I turn on some music, usually in the evening something jazzy. And I make my dinner. I love cooking and I enjoy the art of it as well as really think about what I am eating. Nothing is microwaved and even the easiest takes some work. And then eat and then cleanup. While eating alone without Joe home I tend to read a book so that will sometimes have me shoving my empty plate to the side and continuing at my dinner table for a time. I then have the kitchen to clean. One of my biggest bad habits for a minute had been waiting to do the dishes in the morning. Now a morning habit of dishes was actually a little bit meditative to me while my water reached a boil for the french press, but I realized how much it set my day back in the long run and how chaotic my brain felt and anxiety seemed to end up being at times so so far my most successful habit breaking of 2018 has been to wake to a clean home (bathroom/cat box/trash/floor sweep/kitchen/ the whole nine yards). This has truly helped me ease the anxiety that took some time to address or even recognize and name.

Now I am trying to better build my morning routine and have that same meditative dish cleaning that while doing them, I did achieve. A morning plan does help. But, back to the night time routine. With the sun going down later, the heat high until later (and thus my furry black dog nor myself getting out in the heat until later) and dinner and showers and dishes I feel that my evening has become a little…un-ritual. And rereading this magazine as a whole helped me see that I had lost an evening ritual and needed a Summer-time one built to achieve a better sleep. I’ve been going to sleep as late as 6 in the morning and then sleeping into the day and missing out on morning bike rides and more because of it. I am not achieving much in this time, either. It takes my brain too long to quiet down and then a developed habit of not being tired until late because I slept in doesn’t help. So…back to an evening ritual and treating it as such. I love rituals. I think they are important. I think they remind us not to move through the day as zombies but to embrace it.

My evening is of nurturing now (and in winter, too) I shower to nurture after a hike in nature with my dog which nurtured. I then apply a face mask to nurture (I have been working with a good turmeric one because I tan so quickly no matter what I do with hats and sunblock and so early in the spring I needed to take action in my evenings to counter what sun my face was getting. I actually found a powdered turmeric face mask somewhere and then watched a youtube video of a woman about this subject and now am mixing the turmeric face mask with a little baking soda, lemon fresh squeezed juice and yogurt which actually also makes a better mask consistency and makes it not all flake off, and honey. I don’t use the lemon every day or the baking soda parts though as my skin is really sensitive. (Some of the idea that I have based off of is from this video here).

So now I am in my pj’s or comfy clothes (often my super soft 100% pima cotton “house pants” and some soft shirt and definitely no bra and an orange face mask and my hair tied up, cooking in the kitchen and dancing a little to the music and singing made up songs to the pets, so yeah…don’t be my neighbor is a good life suggestion. I actually have been wearing the face mask through dinner (remember I am by myself and whatever, my crazy Friday nights are usually eating in bed) after dinner and before dishes I wash my face. After the kitchen is clean and all lights are off through the house, the dog has his last outing and so forth, I make a cup of warm tea (such as chamomile) and head to bed with my book. What I am now struggling with is stopping and turning the light off at a decent time. But, I suppose little by little the habits will form that need to and the bad ones will break as I work on them. And I do. But lord when you work for yourself and have no need to leave the house sleeping in and staying up all night can really become a hard habit to break.

If I was productively being all writerly and like, writing an entire novel all night then sure, that life would be fine. But believe me, this after dinner time is far from my most productive in a day even when I do work (actually, sometimes that is not totally true but then I find myself completely unproductive the next nor can I seem to find constancy with this as I’ve allowed myself to try that out, what I found is that I was never awake in the day to actually enjoy things that could only be done in the day and while traveling, that is a must-do).

Working on my evening rituals, as all the little rituals through out my day. My morning is the hardest at the moment…what are your daily rituals?