rituals

making meaning from the mundane

a short walk with friends!

from conversing with friends, i often hear the sentiment of, oh, i want a sense of stability and routine, but after awhile it gets boring and i feel like i need to forcibly shake things up. that balance is one i haven’t quite figured out myself yet either, but i do believe that there is value in upholding routines as a framework to anchor how you spend your time. some of my friends excel at adhering to strict routines — they have a weekly schedule of all their hobbies and they stick to it faithfully — and the progress and outcomes show. other friends struggle to keep things up consistently; we’ve all been there, where we set ambitious goals like going to the gym every other day, and fail to keep it up after week 2. others pack their schedules with social commitments and events and feel as though they never have enough time for themselves and their own pursuits. most people i know oscillate between the three.

this practice isn’t about time-management or goal-setting. that’s a personal reckoning i’m not going to contend with here. instead, i’m advocating for ‘ritualizing’ some of the routines or hobbies in life, elevating the mundane into something special. the shift in framing and perception can go a long way. the rituals have no need to be productive; if anything, that’s antithetical. they should just be something consistent that you want to imbue with meaning. something that you can look forward to. not every recurring activity needs to become a ritual either, just as many as can still feel sacred.

my current rituals are cooking and going on walks. i used to meal-prep or eat dinners at work more frequently to ‘save time to do other things.’ when i started cooking more, i used to think about how much extra time it took. however, as time passed, i found i enjoyed trying new recipes, cooking with my partner and for friends, and developing a larger repertoire of staples. i started seeing it as more than just a chore. going to the grocery store for every meal became a mini-adventure i looked forward to. opening the fridge to fresh produce instead of takeout boxes and boxes of uniform tupperware made me happy. i stopped going out to dinners for 1:1 catch-ups and started inviting people over to cook.

for walking, my New Year’s resolution was to take 10k steps a day. in practice, that meant that i often walked instead of taking transit and would have idle time in the evenings where i’d try to ‘step farm’ to hit my step count for the day. at first, i’d often get impatient with how much extra time it took to get places or feel ridiculous for walking around the blocks aimlessly. slowly, i realized i enjoyed noticing new details in familiar places and building muscle memory through different routes. the city feels smaller and closer now that i’ve walked so much of it — there’s been days where i’ve walked from Panhandle to Potrero, or Alamo Square to Ocean Beach. sometimes, i’ll call my family or invite a friend. it’s a lovely and simple way to spend time with others and makes me feel grateful to call this city home.

sometimes people will ask me how i’m able to keep those up. the answer is that they’re both things that i dearly value now! it’s kind of cool that you can just think of something differently, and it will just start feeling different as a result. there’s something lovely in choosing to see the world just a little more beautifully.

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ps,

i spent the past weekend at rabbitholeathon! it was such a wonderful and warm time, reading and exploring and talking late into the hours of the night. will possibly (probably) write more about it soon, but feeling very full and grateful right now.

this piece was borne from one such late-night convo. it feels odd to write something more didactic again? i’m annoyed at how i sound LOL, and i think i’ve said to myself for so long that i don’t want to write things that are prescriptive, so now i’m like bruh, wyd here. but rituals are cool. i have a friend who takes himself on a solo movie date every Tuesday. another friend reads 20min before bed every day. etc etc. u have free will!

i’ve been thinking about where i want to direct my focus lately. i’ve still been really busy at work, and october has been one of my most stressful months this year. will probably be in this state til early december, but alas. trying to do better at balancing my time and not getting completely consumed by work because i definitely start falling apart the more i stress > compartmentalize > stress etc.

hoping to have more time to write soon.

as always, with love <3