{"id":806,"date":"2022-07-19T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-19T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/?p=806"},"modified":"2022-07-18T10:23:10","modified_gmt":"2022-07-18T14:23:10","slug":"routine-or-ritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/2022\/07\/19\/routine-or-ritual\/","title":{"rendered":"Routine or Ritual"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last week, I commented on prescriptive routines<\/a>. Let’s pull that thread. Humans are driven by habit and ritual, after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have rituals that serve you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little over a quarter of a century ago, I committed myself to completing a novel that I’d been working on since high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a little ritual before I began writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would make a mug<\/strong> of espresso.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would turn on the Bring on the Night<\/em> live album (stop laughing at me).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would sit down at a large, heavy desk, and fire up the household’s Apple IIe, place my fingers on the keyboard, feeling the ridges on the F and J keys, moving my fingers slightly in the curves of the other keys in the home row, take a deep breath and plunge into the writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Federal Holidays or days when there was too much snow for my husband to go to work (we lived in Virginia, so you’re looking at a couple of inches), I couldn’t really write. I had someone trying to talk to me<\/em> as I was trying to get into the groove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did finish that first draft. It was deeply terrible. But finished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sometimes think about that little ritual and laugh at myself for my attention being so fragile that I couldn’t write if my groove were thrown off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or, I used to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Chemex<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Today, I needed to write a blog post about productivity, and I couldn’t get started. So, what did I do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I made myself a mug of coffee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started playing Bring on the Night (on a device that hadn’t been INVENTED yet. I love living in the future!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I rested my hands on my laptop keyboard, moved my fingers along the keys in the home row.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I plunged into writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Kenny Kirkland is diving into his keyboard solo, I’m in my groove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point isn’t that writers are weirdos or something. We are, but the point is that where proscriptive routines sometimes can be thrown off easily, sometimes a little ritual can serve you when you need to get something done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have rituals that serve you? Can you develop them consciously?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sign up for Get Control of Your Life!<\/em> and find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
Get Control of Your Life!<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, I commented on prescriptive routines. Let’s pull that thread. Humans are driven by habit and ritual, after all. Do you have rituals that serve you? A little over a quarter of a century ago, I committed myself to completing a novel that I’d been working on since high school. I had a little … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Routine or Ritual”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-online-classes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/ChemexCoffee.jpg?fit=464%2C790&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pLg3p-d0","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":813,"href":"https:\/\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions\/813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figartconsulting.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}