Little Rituals

I struggle to keep afloat at times and I find that having a few rituals that I abide by really help to ground me.

Now, I’m not talking about depression, or OCD or anything serious, I’m just easily overwhelmed at times, so these are a few habits that I’ve adopted to help me to “adult” when I don’t feel like it… mornings are a particular struggle…

I just refer to them as “Rituals” to feel a bit witchy 🙂

Weekly:

1. Tidy my gaff on a Friday evening: I’m lucky that I finish work early on Fridays, so I’ve gotten into the habit of doing all my “weekend work” on Friday evening (grocery shopping, hoovering, stick on a wash), so I can just relax and make the most of my Saturday and Sunday.
2. Clear out my pockets and handbags. This sounds daft, but it has really helped me to stop carrying around so much shite!! On Sunday evenings, I clear out my coat pocket and my handbag and get rid of all the receipts, leaflets, packets, tissues etc that I’ve accumulated over the previous week.

 

Daily:

1. Every morning I draw a card from my tarot deck and take a minute to look at it and interpret it with the day ahead in mind. This grounds and focuses me a lot more than jumping straight onto Facebook or Twitter (which tend to make me pretty anxious these days, that can wait til after a cuppa).
2. Drink a long sip of water. I am TERRIBLE at drinking water during the day. I don’t know how I don’t absorb the rain when I step outside, I must be so dehydrated. I can appreciate the fact it’s really good for us, so I keep a bottle of water by my bed and drink a long slurp every morning, first thing.
3. Last thing at night, I sort out my clothes for the following day. Not in a fashion conscious way, but just to make sure I don’t need to scramble to find clean clothes first thing in the morning, when I’m at my most frazzled. I set out some tights, undies, skirt and top. and go to bed feeling smug as fuck.
4. Sleep With Me (ooh lala), I used to listen to a lot of interview or story-based podcasts in bed (Welcome to Night Vale, Generation Why, Serial, Distraction Pieces), but as I always fell asleep during them, I ended up having to re-listen again the next day. Now I save them for work and  I listen to Sleep With Me at night. It’s a podcast designed to make you drift off… just a meandering, wandering, drifting stream of consciousness that doesn’t make you feel guilty for missing any plot twists or storylines. I fall asleep to this HARD! http://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/

Sometimes I’m lucky to even make it through the introduction.. zzzzzzz…

 

So, that’s it, just a few things that I make time for regularly to help me skate through life 🙂

 

Shipping out

We had some annual leave carried over from last year, so we decided to take a trip to England to see Barry’s family during his niece and nephew’s mid term break.

Just before Christmas, we took on a new addition to our band: a 9 year old yellow foot tortoise who I call “The Creature”, so we had her to consider.

I could say that finding boarding for her was too much hassle/too expensive…. but to be honest, I’ve become really attached to her and I was just reluctant to leave her for a full week, so we looked into taking the ferry to England instead of flying over.

I had reservations… the crossing is long compared to flying, it’s a hefty drive the other end from Cairnryan… but I have to say I really enjoyed it.

Pros:

No airport hassle – not having to be there 2 hours before hand for security and checking in, no worrying about hand luggage restrictions and whether my underwire was going to trigger a security alert (Every. Single. Time.) We didn’t even have to show ID as we were travelling from Belfast to Scotland.

We really enjoy road trips… as it happens, we actually both really enjoy hopping in to the car and exploring, so the drive down from Scotland wasn’t really a chore after all.

The Creature handled the journey really well, we tucked her up in a shoe box with newspaper and a hot water bottle underneath to keep her toasty, however, at times she was far more interested in climbing up to my shoulder for a good look. Nosey tortoise!!

Yellowfoot Tortoise

Bell X1, The Great Defector

I have to say, it worked out really well.  🙂