Rhythm of my Seasons

The Rhythm of my Days and Weeks were posted a few days ago. This post is about seasonal rhythms.

Clothes. I still move things from closet to storage and back twice a year (usually spring and fall…whenever the temperature changes enough). I don’t wear corduroy pants and sweaters when the weather is warm just as I don’t wear shorts, skirts and capri pants when it is very cold. Some things stay in my closet all the time – and they wear out the fastest.

Volunteering. Spring and Fall are when I spend the most time volunteering. Those are the seasons that the schools have most of their field trips and stream assessments.

Travel. My husband likes to do traveling in the spring and fall – and that is probably the time for most our travel…but it happens in the other fall and summer too so there might not be a season for travel.

Classes. There is more time for classes in the winter and summer. I’m always a little surprised that I enjoy them more in winter although I am not sure why.

Outdoor work around the house. There are chores that dominate in every season. Cleaning out and planting in spring. Watering and mowing in summer. Raking leaves in the fall. Shoveling snow in the winter.

Food. Pomegranates in December. Orange squashes and apples and pears and cranberries in the fall. Tomatoes and melons at the height of summer. Garlic scapes and strawberries in late spring/early summer. Yum (even though sometimes I buy them out of season because, these days, many are in season someplace in the world).

I still have not come up with any of my rhythmic habits that I want to change in 2017….but writing these posts has heightened my awareness of the rhythms…and confirming to myself that they are what I want them to be.

Rhythm of my Weeks

The Rhythm of my Days was posted earlier this week. This post is the rhythm of my weeks.

The first activities I thought about that take place weekly are ones that keep ‘home’ functioning and they’ve been part of my weekly rhythm for my entire adult life:

Groceries. Buying food is something I do once a week. During my career years, I was busy Monday-Friday so I almost always went grocery shopping on Saturday morning. Now I go Thursday morning and savor the uncrowded store! I also have started getting produce from a Community Supported Agriculture which happens on a weekly rhythm too.

Laundry. Both my husband and I prefer to do laundry once a week and Saturday has been our preferred day for the last 40 years! I asked him if he wanted to change days now that we could do it any day of the week – but he wants to stick with Saturday.

It took me a little longer to think of other weekly rhythms. I had to look back at notes and my calendar. It became obvious that I communicate via phone or email or in person with certain family members virtually every week! That is something that has happened in the past 5 years: a post-career addition.

Looking at the daily and weekly rhythms – I realize how much of my time is ad hoc – and I love that about the way my post-career life! Variety is the spice of life!

Rhythm of my Days

Here we are at the beginning of another year. It’s a good time to try to be objective about how my life is going and decide of I want to make any changes. This year – I couldn’t come up with anything substantial that I wanted to change so I decided to look more methodically – what are the rhythms of my days, my weeks, and my seasons within the year. This is the first post of the series.

The rhythm of my days are mostly habits. Some are longstanding:

• Getting up before 6 AM and being in bed by about 10. I feel better and enjoy my days more when the sleep/wake cycle is almost the same every day.
• I eat my meals at about the same time every morning…trying to have the largest meal as midday although that is not always possible. It is easier now that when I was away from home most days during my career.
• Reading ‘books’. I always have a book I am reading and that has been a long standing daily activity. IT was physical books…but somewhere along the line became more and more digital.

Some are additions since I’ve retired:

• A daily blog post. I write it and schedule it to come out the night before. When I travel, I double up before I go and the posts still come out once a day.
• Zentangle and meditation. They are two separate things. They both provide an interlude of centering…of drawing myself completely into the present. The creation of Zentangle tiles is a pleasant byproduct.
• 12,000 steps is my goal for each day (measured via a Fitbit). The way I get them can vary. Many times, it includes ‘bounces’ on my Swopper chair in front of the computer. I ramped up before I retired but the activity level became a lot more consistent once I was not in the thick of career related activities.
• Writing 3,000 words a day just became a goal in 2016. It got easier as the year progressed. The goal includes words written for the blog post, writing about the events of the day, and notes from classes ----really anything I want to write about.

What is not part of my daily rhythm that once was?

• Reading a newspaper. These days I use news feeds from multiple sources and it’s a more technical skew that newspapers had.
• The evening news. I watch some stories while I fix or eat dinner – but very rarely watch a full program. Looking back, there were many periods that I did not watch news…because I was too busy. I remember listening to The News Hour when my daughter was young (20 years ago) because at that time it was not graphic – it was interviews without pictures to back them up – so was something we could watch while she was with us.

The rest of the day is full of other activities that differ from day to day, week to week, etc. As I wrote this post, I surprised myself with how many items are ‘daily’ for me. I still haven’t discovered anything I want to change in 2017!