Being the Bird
Usually I am serious about the morning. The necessity of routine requires all my attention. If I’m doing it right, my morning routine requires getting a good 8–9 hours of sleep prior… but that’s up to the me of yesterday. However disciplined she was or wasn’t, the morning part involves making my bed, drinking a big glass of water, taking a cold shower, doing yoga, eating a healthy breakfast and starting work early. I do these things because they help me to better like being in this weird little human body. When I don’t do them, my back hurts and I get migraines and my ears ring, and all that makes me feel clumsy and sad. So, the routine is important.
But I don’t like it. Every day I want to skip it, and when I don’t skip it, I feel unduly miserable and bored every minute that I’m doing it. I don’t know exactly why this is… maybe it’d due to the adult ADD I was finally diagnosed with last year. That would make a lot of sense, from what I understand about the ways that brain chemistry reacts to novel things vs. routine things. When I’m feeling mean, I tell myself the routine is hard because I’m lazy and undisciplined. But I think it might be something else. Something that I find difficult to name, but that has a pretty big pull on my life.
I think there is such thing as a spirit. Or, just that essential life-force part of us that’s nourished by things other than food, work, exercise and rest…
