“What a joy to be in my own home!...What a bliss to know that no one will come to interfere with my work, my reading, my walks.”
Barring the strike of sickness, I have Thursdays to myself. It is joyful, blissful time, time I spend mostly in my room, with a Modern Forestry candle, books, quotes, lists, and no noise but a space heater and the keyboard clicks.
Let me put it a couple other ways:
“The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.”
“I think solitary confinement might rank just beneath an ocean cruise if the stack of paper and supply of pens were adequate.”
I'm not sure about the ocean cruise part, but my love language is alone time with pen and paper. You probably know what happens first on a day like today.
“Mma Ramotswe liked to make lists, and, like all people who make lists, she was inclined to take an optimistic view of their contents...Lists, she thought, are the stories of our lives; they give a picture of who we are and what we do every day. ”
I detail my time so as not to twitter it away. I build in margin to remind myself I'm human. And then I take a go at it for all I'm worth and it fills me to the brim with satisfaction. If I imagine my life, or simply a Thursday, without a plan, I'd probably go to Miracle Hill for an hour, or to TJ Maxx, then read in bed or sit in the sun and look for new recipes. I wonder how long the spontaneity could last before a list happened.
But on an average Thursday, my daily ritual is something like today's list. My kitchen work this morning was making muffins for tomorrow's breakfast. My devotion was Jesus Calling first, then some prayer journaling, followed by a couple chapters in 1 Corinthians and a couple chapters in Pursue the Intentional Life. I went over into the margin, but it was there.
I walked and ran, 15 minutes each, and showered with efficiency before putting on the same outfit I wear everyday (no decision = no use of time). I copied lesson plans onto white boards for the kids' homeschool day tomorrow. Lunch was a Super Stuffed tortilla left over from last night's dinner, and a bunch of raw cauliflower florets. As I ate, I continued my re-reading of Mason Currey's Daily Rituals and looked for quotes to copy. I sat in silence and thought about my own daily rituals, drawing inspiration for today's blog post.
When I've written my 400 words or so, I'll switch over to Amazon Smile to look for some gifts and a new commonplace book. I'll write a letter to a friend, as I like to do, and with any leftover time, I'll work on the quote wall for our living room. This means matching quotes I love with custom-made Etsy signs. I'll run out of time, I know, and not just on a Thursday.
“We know in our bones that what we have in this life, we have on loan only, and the term of the loan will always be finite. We know that suddenly the referee’s whistle will be blown and that will be the end. But now, at least for the moment, we have it, and want it to last for as long as possible.”