My (New and Improved) Morning Routine

 You see bloggers talk a lot about their "morning routine." Spend five seconds on Pinterest and a thousand of those posts and articles will crop up. I know this because I've pinned about 500 of them. But my morning routine has never consisted of tea and a face mask, or whatever the heck they always recommend. Maybe it used to, but when you have to leave for work at 8:50 to get there by 9:30, you'd have to get up pretty dang early to accomplish more than the basics. Or so I thought. I already get up pretty dang early-- 6:30, to be exact. (And since 8:30 used to be early for me, I consider the fact that I now get up at 6:30 a miracle.) 

I used to think that, even with getting up at 6:30, I only had time for the basics before work. Get up, shower, eat, make my lunch, do some school work, kiss Eli goodbye, leave. There isn't time for yoga, I'd say. But tell me this-- if there isn't time for it in the morning and in the evening there's only time for dinner and two episodes of a show before I inevitably fall asleep, when the hell am I going to do the things that actually take care of me? When am I going to do all the things the Pinterest articles talk about? 

This disparity produced something of an existential crisis of balance, which you've witnessed first-hand through these blog posts the past few months. But then came the new year, and those three days off. I started doing yoga not once a week, not twice a week, but Every. Damn. Day. I made it my habit every morning to wake up, roll over, and roll out my mat. Then I added meditation. I tacked on a three to five minute self-affirming meditation at the end of my yoga practice. Then I bought a deck of tarot cards, and in an effort to become familiar with the deck and the practice, I started doing a daily one card reading every morning after my yoga. This entire process-- yoga, mini-meditation, and tarot reading takes about twenty to twenty five minutes. Since I wake up at 6:30 and am on the mat by 6:40, this means by 7:05 I am in the shower. It used to be that between 6:30 and 7 I would scroll endlessly through social media in order to get quote unquote wake up. Now, I've replaced those thirty minutes of scrolling with thirty minutes of self-improvement, and I am feeling the difference. I feel better, stronger, calmer and more centered. I feel CLEAR. And I don't miss those thirty minutes of scrolling. I still scroll throughout the day, and I'm never going to be one of those people who vilifies social media. Because it's not the social media that's bad, it's the way we use it.

And then, after all that, I still have time to read. Having dressed, done yoga, and nourished myself, I curl up in my bed and read for anywhere from 30-50 minutes. And I feel whole again. That's right-- now, with the addition of yoga and self-reflection to my morning, I have even more time to READ. Who knew that the advice my therapist gave me exactly FIVE TRILLION YEARS AGO was actually true? You can do less and actually feel like you've done more! Who knew?! Everyone, it turns out.

So that's my new and improved morning routine. I'd recommend trying to implement one for yourself, but don't just do what I do. What I do works for me. Don't measure your success at self-care by whether or not you drink tea and do face masks, or whatever it is everyone else does. (I realize I've shit on tea and face masks a lot in this blog post. I don't hate them, they're simply the first typical "self-care" things I thought of.) I did for a while, and it only made me feel worse, because those things feel useless to me. I was desperately trying to make this persona of calm fit me, and feeling more desperate and anxious over the fact that those things didn't make me calm. Simply put, what I now do every morning works for me because it makes me feel like I'm improving myself. That I'm actually doing something good for myself. Self-awareness and analyzation are very important to me. Reflection and time alone with my thoughts help me to understand who I am underneath everything that I am a part of. Underneath my relationship, my job, and my education. Time away from that routine is what I think has made me feel so untethered these past few months. I've been untethered from myself. 

This morning routine has been a 20 minute daily way for me to get to know myself again. A 20 minute check-in. So that's what I'm recommending to you. Whether that's yoga, taking a walk, reading, journaling, or doing a damn face mask-- find a way to check in with yourself every day. But don't torture yourself by doing what others think is the right method of relaxation. Do the things that actually relax you. 

Just a little bit of self-care common sense from the girl who took 4 months to realize all this. 

 -Fran

Three More Days

Last week I had three magical days off in a row. I don't think I've had more than two days off in a row since I started this new job. After four months of nonstop, this was so different I almost didn't know how to do it. 

On my first day off: I recharged. I did yoga, cleaned, and then got back into bed. Watched A Series of Unfortunate Events, drank tea. The boy came over, and we watched Westworld, then took a dang nap. I plotted two more days of rest.

On my second day off: I figured out which of my chakras is blocked. (Sacral. Obviously.) Did yoga, meditated, got hot chocolate from Peaks, and watched more A Series of Unfortunate Events. Finished a book I've been reading since September, then finished a short story that has been sitting half-finished on my hard drive for two weeks. 

On my third day off: I began it once again with yoga. Then, a walk through the art park and a trip to the store, accompanied by a podcast featuring Brene Brown, who in just one hour helped me realize some huge things about myself and my relationships. When I got home, I had an email about work. Which, all through my shower, totally wigged me out. I should just do that, I told myself, tension headache already forming. I started to feel myself getting back into that mindset of "getting things done" and I hated it. I tried to fight it off. I sat down in bed, and told myself I would only work on this thing for an hour at most, and then I would move on. In that hour, I made huge edits, found the perfect music, and was able to honestly say in my email reply that things were going well with the project. Then, I actually did as I promised myself I would-- I moved on. I watched more Netflix, and then settled in to read. At which point- another headache, which plagued me for the rest of the day. 

The moral of the story is: whenever possible, rearrange your schedule in your favor. Ahead of my three days, I desperately scrolled through Pinterest, trying to figure out what I would “do” with my time. By the end of night one, I thought to myself, “What in the world am I going to do with two more days off?” But the thing is, we need it. We need that time, that empty space, to fill with creativity. Otherwise it’s like trying to fill a shot glass with creativity. I think creativity is a lot like a gas, or a cat. It will fill the space you give it. If you are only able to give it a little bit of space, it will be small. But if you’re able to give it a whole room, it will be vast. 

I think it was absolutely vital for me to learn how to have a successful day off. I can't tell you how many times Eli has innocently and sweetly entered my apartment on a Wednesday or Sunday, only for me to snap at him after he's done LITERALLY NOTHING WRONG, while sweating and holding a vacuum in one hand, yoga mat in the other, Netflix playing in the background. Since I started working full time I've been so desperately trying to do all of my down time in those single days off, that I've failed completely, and only stressed myself out more. I needed these three days to learn that-- I accomplished all of the relaxing on day one. And again on day two, with a little more creative productivity thrown in. And again on day three. I needed three days off with literally nothing planned to learn how to relax again. 

So I think part of the reason why I feel so good right now is because I had time to simply be at home. Nowhere to be, nothing to do, except feel safe and relaxed and comfortable in my (still relatively new) space, and make it even more of a home. Even doing something as small as just finding a box to put my crystals in, to make them feel special. This made my room feel like a zen space, and I've felt it's power because I've been able to spend time feeling zen in there. As I said to my therapist about yoga this week, "it doesn't matter if you 'know yoga will help' if you don't actually do it! It can't help you if you don't do it!" Making the commitment to yoga and making the commitment to being chill and doing absolutely nothing on those three days transformed my apartment from something that "could be chill if I had time" to something that "is chill because I spent three days being lazy as heck in it." 

I feel better at the end of this three day retreat than I did when I began. I relaxed, I read, I weeded the books and ideas and pressures from my life that I no longer have space or time for. I got organized, and planned the things I've been avoiding in an effort to make them less negative. And I got clear. Maybe not on what I want to do with my entire life. Because,  f*ck. That's a big thing to figure out in three days, and the kind of bullshit only I would expect that from myself. But I do know what I want to do with this year. I want to tell my truth. I want to write it, film it, document it in drawings and pictures and letters and Instagram captions and short stories and blog posts. I want to write through and write out the shit that is hardest for me to say. Because one thing I have learned from my family in the past twenty years of ups and downs and emotional bullshit is-- it does way more harm than good to hide it. To not say it. So I'm going to be honest. I'm going to speak the f*cking truth, my f*cking truth-- the things that make me cry and make me feel ashamed and make me feel happy and scared. Because that is the only way I am going to remain grounded and human and real, and not a shell of a person who is host only to depression and anxiety. I want to be host to creativity and love and life and abundance. Not that other shit. 

And that is a tall order, I know. But I'm going to do it one piece at a time. The other day, I was working on a short story, and it was so hard for me to write the final sentences of the story that would actually make it good. Because it made me feel vulnerable to write those words, and vulnerable to even think them. But once I went there, even though thinking them inflicted tiny cuts on my heart, the second I wrote them they started to heal. 

My third day off, on my morning walk at the art park, I listened to an episode of Krista Tippet's podcast On Being, featuring Brene Brown. She talked about vulnerability, because that is her jam. I've only scratched the surface of what I think vulnerability's importance is in my life, but I have a suspicion that it holds the key to everything. I think when I dare not go there, when I dare not be vulnerable, when I dare not look at the things I know will hurt me, I hurt myself more. I think my creativity is tied to my vulnerability. So when I hid from my vulnerability, I hid from my creativity. Maybe I needed to hide for a minute to see that that was the case. To see what I was hiding from.

But I think I'm done hiding now.

-Fran 

Hi(atus)

Hi.

I've been taking a break for a minute here. I knew it was coming, and I knew it was necessary. I got through the holidays, came out the other side on New Years, and have started to feel this urge for minimalism in my life. Ready to simplify at every turn. Anything can go. I'm like Emily Gilmore in the new season of Gilmore Girls, getting rid of everything that no longer serves me. 

But I'm finding it hard to take my foot off the break and get started again. This happened a few years ago. Granted, I was traumatized and depressed, which is part of why I didn't go anywhere, and spent all my time in coffee shops, waiting for life to happen to me. Right now feels a lot like that, except I'm spending all my time at this new job. I feel like I'm on the brink of another creative and personal renaissance. I'm almost at the end of this down cycle, and when I come out of it everything will be clearer. I'll have a better idea of what I want to do, what I want my freaking hair to look like, and who I want to be. And I'll be ready to be that person. But right now I feel like I'm on this train that I have no control of, and we're traveling through mountainous terrain in a fog, so I can't even see where we're going. 

So for now, I'm doing yoga. I'm trying to sit with this feeling somehow, and yoga is helping. I've always had a relationship with yoga. With stretching. When I was younger and played soccer, stretching afterwards was always my favorite part. Which is probably why I stopped playing soccer. I didn't really like the "playing soccer" part of it.

I have done it on and off since high school, but since starting this new job it has been more off than on. I just haven't found time for it. So during this creative and mental break, I decided to replace everything with yoga. I have done it every day since the first of January, which I know isn't the most incredible feat of all time, but I'm proud of it and I feel good. I'm proud of the fact that I did it even on morning 1 of my period, even though it was pretty much just me groaning on the mat, I am proud of the fact that I got on the mat. And I feel good. I don't think about it. Every morning, I just get up, (pee) and do yoga. Then I shower and go on with my day, knowing that I have already done something positive for myself. My body feels better, and my mind does too. I legitimately feel like I am learning something from being able to breathe through the pain of the poses. I am able to sit with my anxiety longer, and let it pass. I don't freak out as quickly, because I am more able to tolerate my discomfort, and then work through it. 

So that's where I am right now. Still working hard at managing my anxiety and my self. Wishing you the best of luck with your goals for 2017.

Happy New Year,

Fran