💬 What’s your quirkiest daily ritual?
Our monthly(ish) community prompt
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.”
—Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
I love Dillard’s metaphors for seeing our schedule as scaffolding, a net, or a lifeboat; all to protect us from life’s “chaos and whim,” including defending against the two forms of Time Anxiety that describes in his new book:
Existential: “Time is running out in my life.”
Daily Routine: “There is not enough time in the day.”
In Daily Rituals part one, I shared how survivorship bias and success metrics might color outside interpretations of one’s daily routines, based on flip or flop scenarios for a future project.
In Daily Rituals part two, on protecting your flame by ignoring that external gaze, I asked why we’re so fascinated by how others spend their days, perhaps seeking just one tiny step or tweak to take us closer toward our goals.
I chuckled at this similar take on the book Daily Rituals from Maria Popova, whose own creative output at The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) is astounding:
“The notion that if only we could replicate the routines of great minds, we’d be able to reverse-engineer their genius is, of course, an absurd one — yet an alluring one nonetheless. Currey’s feat is in at once indulging and debunking the mythology of our voyeuristic routine-fetishism by exploring the wildly diverse ways in which celebrated creators structure their days, while at the same time engaging in delicate pattern-recognition to reveal a number of recurring undercurrents essential for creative success.”
As we conclude this series, why not indulge ourselves in a little daily rituals voyeurism amongst fellow Dohnuts?
Building on our earlier monthly(ish) Community Doh discussion threads, I’d love to hear from you in the comments:1
💬 Which of your daily rituals sparks the most joy? Or . . .
What part of your day floats your lifeboat?
Which ritual best protects your flame?
What is the quirkiest part of your daily routines?
What’s one thing you’ve given yourself a full permission slip for?
What surprising nugget might share in a mini-vignette about how you structure your days?
I can’t wait to hear what you share, and maybe even borrow an idea or two 😉
❤️
🍩 View earlier discussion prompts—and weigh in any time, it’s never too late!—here:
💬 Community Doh: Discussion Prompts
Every six weeks, we open up a discussion thread related to that month’s posts. These comment threads are for paid subscribers only—that means only paying doh’ers can read and reply to comments. Hopefully that gives you an extra dash of courage for sharing your story (as it does for me), knowing they aren’t Google searchable or directly out in public view.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also appreciate these two Free Time podcast episodes:
And these earlier Rolling in Doh posts:
I love this reflection, Jenny! I’m freshly postpartum with my second, so most (if not all) of my daily rituals are on pause at the moment. But one ritual we are keeping going as a family is having an all-out dance party before my five-year-old’s shower each night. He gets to let out his excess energy, I use it as an opportunity to stretch it out, even our four-month-old gets in on it with big toothless smiles. While I mourn (and sometimes feel guilty about) my lack of space to maintain individual rituals during this season of life, I’m also viewing these family rituals as opportunities for all of us to fill our cups.