Morning Routines

I slept in this morning. I kept pressing "snooze" on my alarm, and finally got up with only just enough time to sink down a cup of coffee, grab a bowl of cereal, throw on some clothes and jump in my car. I've had a headache all day and certainly haven't been my most focussed or productive self.

How you start the day certainly sets the tone for the day, and a pleasant, relaxed beginning makes for a much more pleasant day. We all know what happens when we get out of bed "on the wrong side" - when we start the day badly it can be very hard to turn it around.

So what is a good start to the day? I sat down and wrote my ideal morning routine:

• I would wake up at about 6am
• make myself a nice hot cup of herbal tea (somehow I miraculously no longer need my caffiene hit before I can do anything)
• write my morning pages
• do some yoga
• have breakfast, shower, etc
• make a fanstasic cup of coffee, and carry it into my warm, light-filled studio to settle down at my harpsichord for a long practice session.

This is not something I have yet managed to do (and I have to work on that music studio!), and currently I am a complete zombie in the mornings, but nevertheless it is something I intend to work towards.

Morning routines seem to be an important part of many successful people's lives. 17 out of 20 top executives that Jim Citrin spoke to woke up before 6am to exercise, check email, and start the day in a relaxed manner; 36 people on 43 Things want to develop a morning routine; and bloggers everywhere (here, here and here) are analysing how best to start the day.

What's your morning routine?

Image from Stock.xchng

The Flat Parts of Life's Rollercoaster

I have been working through Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way and this morning I decided to flip back through my morning pages. I found this entry that I had written back in September last year. It is still something that I haven't been able to solve yet.

Saturday, 24 September 2005.

Sometimes I don't seem to know what is real and what is not. I spent a lot of today wishing for something else rather than being in the experience of today. I think that us humans tend to want all the good times - those times when we feel most alive and energised - without any of the ordinary times. Really, it's not the bad times - the real low lows - that are the worst for me; it is the blah ordinary times - the days with no highlights or lowlights, with no contrast, the days that are bathed in a murky grey, the days that seem to have no purpose to them. Those are the days when I only feel half alive, when I feel that I am going through the motions, but not actually being there at all. What makes these days like that? Are they predestined to be that way? Is it something in the way we wake up? Does it have something to do with our expectations for the day? I know that I feel lost if I don't have a clear purpose, but I also know that I need to take time out. How do I do that without it going bad?