So I thought about it, and here’s what I came up with as a template for my days:
On most mornings, when I’m not fighting off illness, I tend to wake up naturally around 7:00. I’ll do the tea/coffee and email/blog thing for a half hour or so. Just enough to keep the email landslide at bay. While I like and enjoy technology, I’m trying to make sure I’m not a slave to it. I was starting to feel that way for a while there, but I think that recently, I’ve found some balance on that front and no longer need to read every twitter or respond to every blog post. There just would never be enough hours in the day.
After that is the usual shower/breakfast/get dressed trio, and Daisy often needs a mid-morning walk as soon as I’m presentable. Perhaps I’ll take the camera along on some of these and see where we go.
An early afternoon snack, say around 1ish, with a magazine and a cup of tea may be a nice way to break up my day. I’m thinking it also may be enough of a break to shake me out of any possible morning brain-stuck I feel setting in. Because the plan is to not waste away entire days uselessly.
Tuesday afternoons are the Farmer’s Market/CSA pickup, and taking some time to peruse fresh veggies is always a real treat. And the bonus of being off this month is that I can get there early and swoop up the good stuff before it’s gone. You know, instead of being the one at 5:45 in the afternoon, moaning, “Darn! The peas and spinach are all gone again?!”
And I hate late dinners (one of the blights of my current existence) so if I start cooking promptly at 4 p.m. every afternoon, I’ll never have to worry about feeling bloated at 10 p.m. and may even have enough space for the occasional dessert!
And finally, since I generally tend to run myself into the ground every evening before plunking down into bed too tired to even wash the makeup off my face, 8 p.m. will now be my Gettin’ Ready for Bed Time. I’ll still probably end up doing all sorts of things in the evenings before falling into bed exhausted, but at least I’ll be doing them fresh-faced and already safely in the PJs.
Now you’ll probably notice that there are a lot of things that I didn’t book into this schedule, and that was on purpose. There are things I wanna do when I’m ready, when the mood strikes. Not when my schedule says I must do it. Stuff like writing, trips to the gym and the library, more walks with Daisy, visiting with friends, chores, chats with my mom, etc. I want each individual day to have its own feeling. To be memorable in some different way, instead of each being exactly the same, stamped out by a cookie cutter. I get enough of that during my workdays. This time isn’t about that, it’s about discovering me.
