This is a link-up to The Art of Simple that coincides with the release of the blog's founder Tsh Oxenreider's new book Notes From a Blue Bike. Can't wait to get my hands on this one!
In response to Tsh's question here is something I'm working on:
Re-making the morning.
This idea is not new or creative, but actually following through with this is new to me. Having a job that requires me to be in the office by 8 is ideal. I find it hard to get out of bed if I do not have a place to go. Most of my undergrad years of college I was the type to wake up 15 minutes before I had to leave, throw on jeans and a hoodie, brush teeth, and grab a granola bar right before I ran out the door. Somewhere in my senior year I realized that I felt so much more alert and awake for the day if I had an hour or more to wake up before heading out into the world. This was spurred on by the fact that I had to read about a million books for an online class I was taking at the time and if I didn't push through those books in the morning, they would not get read.
As many have discovered, and I am trying to live out, a morning is the ideal slice of day to carve out some extra time. For the last week or so I have been waking up an extra 30 minutes early. The motivation for this came from a 6 week devotional David and I are doing as part of the membership class for our church. I really enjoy the devotions (5 days/week) but I was finding that I would do day 1 in a timely manner for the week, and then do days 2-5 about 30 minutes before we had to leave for the class. That is not exactly the way to get the most out of a study. Especially a reflective one.
Enter: Mornings.
With the help of a sample life coaching session from Candice (very soon she'll be a certified life coach running her own business!), I decided to challenge myself to wake up at 6am for 2.5 (but I'm thinking I'll actually do 3) weeks. Monday morning marked the start of week 2 and I am LOVING it. A slow morning with a little reading and prayer and a warm cup of tea is a beautiful way to start the day. With the extra 30 minutes I have time to not rush through the study, and I'm not staring at the clock the way I would if I did it the last 30 minutes before leaving. I even have time to sneak in a few quick chores (like emptying the dishwasher) so the apartment is that much more welcoming when I come home.
An ideal morning for me would consist of exercise, a short study, time to get ready without rushing, and since this is the dreaming stage, time carved out for blogging.
Tomorrow morning I will not be waking up at 4am to accomplish a half day's worth of tasks before starting with my job. Not realistic. But if I work towards it, maybe after the 3 week trial of 6am, I can try 3 weeks or waking up at 5:45 and throw in a few minutes of easy exercises. (And as a disclaimer, my goal will never be to wake up at 4am.)
Not changing the world over here, but it's the small mundane tasks that make up a life. As I work to make posititive changes (however big or small) in my life, I hope to be more helpful and uplifting to the people I interact with throughout the day.
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