Patterns and Rituals

We all have our patterns and rituals, things we do on a regular basis, personal schedules we keep.  I spent so many years living in the shadow of someone else’s patterns that I lost many of mine or simply gave up having my own.  Never again.  I can flex and compromise but I also will do what I want to do.

Do you have patterns and rituals in your life?  Saturday laundry?  Sunday brunch?  Hit the gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays?  Laundry on Wednesday evenings?  Wine with dinner?  Church on Sunday?

I don’t know if three Saturdays in a row leads to a ritual, but today (a Saturday) I realized I’ve repeated some things on the past three Saturday mornings.  Shower and yogurt to start, walked to Starbucks for coffee, the neighborhood farmer’s market for produce, a local wine store for two bottles of red and creative routing to minimize the number of alleged crosswalks in which I dodged vehicles whose drivers barely realize that stopping for pedestrians in crosswalks is the law here.  I like this pattern, except for the crosswalk part, but I also realize that the weather won’t be this good every Saturday.

Some of my patterns from a past life include coffee and the newspaper on Sunday mornings, laundry and house-cleaning on Thursday nights, videos on Saturday nights if I didn’t have other plans, mowing the lawn on Saturday mornings during the years I owned homes.  Patterns and rituals give us a measure of control and predictability in our often unpredictable lives; they serve as stable anchors during unstable times.

Do you have a morning ritual?  Mine is shower, shave, get partially dressed, breakfast, finish dressing, make lunch, leave for work.  Coffee fits in either with breakfast or the drive to work.  My morning coffee is a non-negotiable, mandatory ritual. 

Three meals a day is a pattern for me, as is checking email and catching up on news and weather either online or on TV (or both) several times a day.  I rarely go a whole day without texting two of my best friends and pictures of food or wine is involved in many of those texts.  Hey, you have your rituals, I have mine.  Insert smiley face here (another ritual).  Writing something for this blog every few days is a ritual.

Anyway, that’s all for this post.  Time to put clothes into the dryer.  Thanks for visiting.