How do you spend your mornings? Do you have a routine? What would your ideal-yet-realistic mornings look like? I have frequently attempted often dramatic changes to my morning routine hoping that all of my intentions would stick, and still I feel like I’m trying to get my footing doing the one thing I’ve always done every day, waking up. Lately, I’ve been waking up to the low volume bird sounds of my new alarm clock that helps me reach for something that isn’t my phone first thing in the morning. I hit snooze one or two or sometimes three times. I often wake up groggy and anxious, thinking about grabbing my phone or checking my email but reaching towards my three daily readers instead — two from different recovery programs and one faith-based devotional I got for free at work. Sometimes it will take me half an hour to read them, mulling them over and half-falling back to sleep and wishing I was back in it (the sleep). These are my brief and cherished moments with myself and God before I roll out of bed at the last possible moment where I can still get myself together and get to work on time. I get dressed kind of wandering about trying to get my head straight, brush my teeth, do a semi-new skincare routine (wins), throw a frozen Trader Joe’s lunch (and sometimes dinner too) into a plastic bag in my backpack, and either sit for a short yogurt / apple / fixings breakfast or take a breakfast bar and an apple to-go for my 40+ minute commute. On my lucky days I do a 30 minute walking loop through the woods around my neighborhood, always the most serene way to start my day that I haven’t been doing cause of the rain and other excuses.
I wonder if there’s something wrong with me and my seeming inability to stick to a morning routine for very long and then I remember that’s not really the Right Thought at all (in the Buddhist-ish sense not the correct-or-not sense). There is so much of myself and my daily compulsions and sleep habits that could use adjustments, and it really is just a constant process of realignment and tuning up and letting ourselves be tuned up again and again. I am still living in the miracle of 14 1/2 months since I’ve scrolled on any social media and that in itself adds so much to the morning. Abstinence is only the launching off point and the rest is what I fill the space with.
I am happy to share that my poem, Morning Routine, is now published in The Rising Phoenix Review. You can read or listen to the poem on their blog here. As always, I encourage you to check out the other work they’ve published and share what you like. I’ve been loosely following The Rising Phoenix Review since they launched in 2015, and I’m so grateful to the editor, Christian Sammartino, for giving this poem a home. Keep an eye out for two more poems of mine forthcoming in The Rising Phoenix Review this month :) An earlier version of Morning Routine was also a part of a one-night interactive installation for a benefit for The Black Banjo Reclamation Project in San Francisco in July 2022.
I recently finished reading Intimacy in Alcoholic Relationships (a collection of personal stories), and I’m currently reading Facing Love Addiction by Pia Mellody. They’ve been great supplementary readings to a nearly 100-page long inventory I’ve been writing on my relationships and other challenges in my life up until this point.
I have really been on a podcast kick during my long driving commutes all around the Bay Area and during my 3-4 days a week gym time (an actual real routine for me now that is still happening since November Thank God). Some good ones lately are Democracy Now!’s coverage of the ongoing assault on Gaza, and the Mark Groves Podcast, Terrible, Thanks for Asking, and Sober Sisters Talk for topics on relationships and recovery. I also really loved this episode of the Ezra Klein show on “the ‘quite catastrophe’ brewing in our social lives” (spoiler: we should all be hanging out).