#oversharing
I figured I’d post a snapshot of my current routines. Perhaps some of my circle are curious what those outside the conventional work world might be doing with our time. I’m always curious about how others organize their days. These routines have varied over the years, there are some constants like meditation, exercise and fasting, but this my day to day of late.
My day starts around 11am
Dream journal: first thing in the morning, and during the night when I awake from dreams, I write down any dreams that I remember. After I get up I hit the zafu and meditate 30-45 minutes, followed by some basic yoga stretches.
Exercise 30 minutes: joint mobility and strength training.
Brew some potent pour-over coffee with technique I learned from a Japanese coffee shop maestro, add a scoop of collagen and fire up la computadora.
First task at the computer is anki (flash card stuff). It helps with my Spanish vocabulary and anything else I’ve stashed in there that I want to remember. I have a “card deck” for Spanish, one for TIL (today I learned) and one for wisdom quotes that I collect to be reminded of periodically. This fall I’ll add a deck for Japanese as I ramp back up my practice with the language for future trips. Spaced repitition is the most effective way known to retain anything in memory.
Then, solve 5 chess puzzles to put my mind in chess-mode and make one move on each of my chess games in progress (and trash talk with a local friend on one, heh.) I love the chess puzzles, especially those I don’t immediate recognize, because they teach me how to see patterns in chess that are outside my initial perception and I enjoy filling in the blindspot.
Now comes the actual “work” day, which consists of one or more of the following tracks, depending on energy levels:
- Learning Blender (3d creation package.) For art, vr/ar and 3d printing. Future jewelry design ambitions. Also creating material enclosures for gadgets
- Web: plunking on 4 static web sites (old school vanilla html, css and javascript using 11ty and AWS, aka da cloud). This site being one. Keeping my hand in web technologies because they’ve always interested me
- Coding: currently an app called “whispers” for grasshopper site, but also just keeping javascript and python skills honed and evolving
- Writing: rewriting a urban fantasy novel while playing with some intriguing beta AI tech, journaling, writing posts and free-writing
- Art: generative, synectics, design, graphics, and drawing basics
- Electronics: learning foundations, soldering, kits and playing with Raspberry Pi
I’ll spend about a half an hour to an hour on one of the above, then take a break and read a magazine article on the iPad (btw, Libby has excellent access to hundreds of magazines free if you have a local library card.) Or I’ll practice nunchuka, flute or do a mind machine session with the Kasina or trance with focus 10/12. After break, continue the previous track or one of the other ones, interleaved with breaks and break activities, until around 9pm. Some weeks, I will focus on on a single direction, like Blender this week.
Some of the tracks above have goals but none are goal driven. Each session is complete in itself as my focus is more of an ongoing practice and skill building than concrete outcomes. This means each day is complete and nothing is left unfinished.
Around 9pm I take a long walk (non-aerobic amble) followed by a hot bath (and reading a chapter of something with a waterproof kindle, which is totally awesome) then study runes and do some visualization practices.
Now it’s time for entertainment. A glass of wine and an hour episode of some series, currently: Grimm; after the wine I drink a chilled glass of low sodium v8 with ground pepper for my 2 servings of vegetables 😉 Not even any vodka. Then brew some Rooibos or other herbal tea, switch off all the electronics and read some sci fi for an hour to an hour and a half, currently: Witches of Karres
Before bed: a neti nasal rinse, meditate again for 30-45 minutes, stretches, do Tai Chi and zonk. Some days if I wake around 7 or 8am I’ll take a shot of galantamine with some choline and b5 to enhance dreams and go back to bed until 11.
Two days a week I work in short high intensity intervals of 20 secs each x 3 on the exercise bike before bath.
- Saturday is slack day: no routine, edibles, ales, pizza or other junk food like wings (air-fryer ftw!) with blue cheese dip and a movie. Or visit family and work on my superpowers con mi nieta y play chase con mi superfast nieto
- Sunday fast and organize agenda in evernote for the coming week
- Thursday adds conversation Spanish classes over Zoom
- Friday adds take-out
- Tuesday adds grocery shopping
- Each month also usually has an ongoing 30 day experiment of some sort or another. This might be establishing a new habit or trying a new discipline. This 30 days, for example, is trying the 20:4 eating schedule (i.e. all meals within a 4 hour window each day from 4pm to 8pm. Except, of course, Sunday.)
- This summer I’ll be allocating some time at the shooting and/or archery range. One range I’m looking at actually has both
Now let’s talk magic, because that is a key element of my path. Each day I endevour to contact this thread which is a part and parcel of my fabric of identity, ever since I remember. Magic is realizing the potential power of thought-forms. It’s a source of navigation in psychedelic experiences and dreams, and a source of mastery in the consensual worlds. There are constant forces that want to structure our thoughts for us. These are beliefs and cultural indoctrination. But to bend the power of these thought-forms to our intent is the path of the magician. To form an intent and impregnate the food we eat, the liquids we drink and the air we breathe with the absorption of this intent into our being is magic 101. So I will take an intent, like being fit, at a specific weight, and work with it to calibrate the efficacy of my will. In the presence of toxic thought forms I affirm and re-write my automatic responses with “you are safe. you are secure. everything is ok” to counter our biological and knee-jerk wiring that is always worried and agitated that something is amiss. Our skittish ancestors were selected for survival, not well-being.
When not traveling, driving in the mountains, visiting or engaging in other activities, this is the framework of my days. I am fortunate to be able to structure this time in a way I find most beneficial. It has the right amount of core practices that build resilience and enough flexibility in tangents that can vary with how I feel that particular day. And occassionally I’ll blow off a whole day, just because I’m a total slacker