Happy (Gregorian) new year! In light of the proverbial “fresh start” that people crave at this time of the calendar, I thought I’d share my current scheduling framework for my otherwise unstructured pandemic L-I-V-I-N’, in case it is helpful to those who are looking for ideas for their own daily frameworks. More importantly, I will describe how I have tricked myself into doing them regularly! by which I mean how I have connected my doing them to WHY I’m doing them. Namely, that the WHY is directly hitched to my deep knowing that these habits beget my quality of life. Experience has taught me that I need to do these tasks every day, as much as that is possible, but they can be in whatever order I feel called to and/or the external needs of the day dictate. More on that later.

Also, to be clear, I don’t have a Real Job rn (she said, self-consciously), so a lot of this I CAN do because I have the luxury of time (read: extreme privilege [WHY IS THAT WORD SO HARD TO SPELL]). My basic needs are met, ~~I freeload off my spouse~~ , I don’t have a job to report to outside the home, and my only kid is in a more independent phase (Wait hang on, is Homeschool Hall Monitor a Real Job? Because if so then I totally have a Real Job). However, I have taken to heart the advice of writer/actor/director Nia Vardalos—of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” fame—who said, “If the phone doesn’t ring with a job offer, CALL YOURSELF.” So I’ve decided that the below practices are my “job” right now and that I’m going to see what happens when I report to “work” every day.

Here they are—my “job description” if you will:

1. Prayers and coffee. I know I just said “whatever order” but actually this item needs to be first. Because I need coffee and prayers—at the same time, together, first thing, non-negotiable—to make the rest of the list work. So this looks like wake up, say a bunch of Baha’i prayers in my mind/heart—whichever ones come into my head that day (and I happen to have memorized)—before my feet hit the floor. When I have mustered enough will to get up, I go make the coffee, eat a little fruit, take a few vitamins and such, scan the Internet (though this can be a dicey practice—I definitely do better when I have a spiritual buffer in the way of a few prayers first), and then settle in to caffeinate and commune with my spirit some more. This usually looks like the Baha’i Long Healing Prayer, which I’ve been saying almost every day since 2016. For obvious reasons.

2. Exercise. Sweating and bopping around for at least 20 minutes every day = mood boost. I exercise most every day, because on the temperament scale, I skew “active,” meaning that it is my nature to move around a lot. This is also why can’t have a desk job, because sitting for 8+ hours is Not My Jam. In terms of what I do, I LOVE 90s AEROBICS*. YouTube is a treasure trove for this stuff, luckily, so I didn’t have to retain my VHS player and tapes.

*Rampant body-shaming talk from fitness instructors aside that was characteristic of those times. They really were assholes with their “C’mon ladies! That flap of skin that wiggles when you wave isn’t going to tone itself!” and other such bullshit. Contemporary stuff is better, language-wise, but also has more burpees, so I content myself with grapevines and flipping off the screen when I hear body shaming, rather than body-positive talk and doing mountain-climbers for 2 minutes straight.

I also love to walk and look at things. I come from a long line of hobbyist photographers, so from early on, I was conditioned to look for nice light, interesting shapes, brilliant color combos, etc. A few years ago, as another self-care-mood-boost, I came up with the idea for the hashtag “#hopeinbeauty” (which now looks like A Thing! Yay!) wherein I go for walks and take and post a picture of something beautiful I spied on my way. Beauty is what gives me hope, and hope is what makes me interested in being here in the present moment. Walking and actively looking for something lovely to appreciate and share with others is a really efficient way to feel better.

3. Meditation. This is a new practice for me. I’ve tried and failed to make this a routine over the years, but it wasn’t until taking this class on how to use your intuition that it really clicked. Just sitting there and NOT doing things (other than watching my thoughts) is meh for me—but this class taught me a process! For doing things! In my mind! To tidy up! Which is all a decided YES for this active gal. I also have a weekly standing meditation session with a dear friend, where we do inner work together. Having an “accountabilabuddy,” if you will, also helps.

Side note: I’m still trying figure out the most efficient “when” for this practice—sometimes I do it after prayers, other times it’s still a struggle to drag myself into it, TBH.

4. Writing. I’ve been tinkering with my morning routine—it used to be coffee/prayers-exercise-now-what, but with the addition of numbers 3 through 6, I’ve had to figure out ways to trick myself? into actually doing these other (sometimes overly lofty) things. I’ve discovered that if I leave writing further down the list of activities, what is scheduled to be 20+ minutes of writing becomes like 3-5 hours + 20-some minutes of writing, in order to accommodate the amount of time it takes to dick around on the internet first. Thinking about my list in light of the adage? aphorism? piece of advice from Mark Twain* “EAT THE FROG” has helped—meaning do the hard things first, so you’ll actually do them. Writing has to be one of the “frogs” of my day so I just effing get it done, so it doesn’t loom over me like an anvil-over-coyote-type situation.

*I looked it up: https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/eat-the-frog

I really tried hard to find a photo credit—very sorry to the person whose intellectual property this is. I can’t read the (c) but I hope it suffices for credit. :(

In terms of what I write, well friend, you’re reading it. Maybe one day it’ll get strung together in a small, bound paper copy of a something, but for now, I’m pulling a fast one on myself by thinking of it as just blog posts. You know, so I’ll actually write things instead of getting overwhelmed by the idea of I’m Sitting Down To Write A Book.

5. Art. Real talk: I often make art because I can’t think of anything else to do with my time that doesn’t depend on others for anything—like I can just sit down and make something without needing a responsive framework like a job or a gig or anything. I could say lofty things like I AM A MAKER WHO MAKES THINGS but the first sentence feels truer. While I AM a maker, I make things BECAUSE WTF else am I going to do with my time and feel quote-unquote productive?

Also, like the Rumi poem goes, “Let the beauty we love be what we do…”—I make art because I love literal beauty (see above about hope). My art—largely collage—is all about taking disparate elements and organizing them into something that feels beautiful and cohesive and resonant to me. And that process is so fun! It’s easy to get into a flow state there, which, again, is what draws me nearer to hope.

6. Reading/study/self-development work. When the pandemic started, I realized pretty quickly that I needed to impose some sort of structure upon myself and my then newly dis-employed? life. I came up with the idea of “Homeschooling for Adults”—pockets of time in my day where I’m assigning myself to Do A Thing (i.e., not getting distracted in all the various ways I might) alongside my de facto homeschooled kid. (Note: I’m not her homeschool teacher—I’ll leave that thankfully to the good people at her now virtual public school—but I *am* her hall monitor! So there’s that.) Homeschooling for Adults was sort of another name for this list, really—art, “gym” (see above about exercise), studying something, etc. Admittedly, it took me the better part of six or so months to actually implement this idea, and actually it really was only after the writing component came on board that I feel like it coalesced as the routine you see before you. I think I needed to identify the various “frogs” that I needed to “eat” to get myself to actually carry out this framework.

Sneakily?* I formed a few different study groups with various friends and family members over video chat. My current slate of self-development work includes study the following materials:

Oneness Model—self-development workbook by Julie Burns Walker, which provides a framework for understanding personal and collective evolution.
Baha’i writings—my faith’s ocean of sacred scripture, which has myriad practical components on carrying out “an ever-advancing civilization,” both inwardly and outwardly.
Anti-racist work—I’m currently reading “My Grandmother’s Hands” by Resmaa Menaken. It’s a FASCINATING exploration of embodied and inherited racism, and contains exercises to get a better understanding of where, literally, those beliefs reside within. (I love learning about epigenetics so much…)

*I say “sneakily” because I accidentally tricked myself into this structure. If I had set out with the idea of AND NOW, I SHALL FORM MY STUDY CURRICULA I probably wouldn’t have done it. But these groups came on board organically and before I knew it, there were many of them! And I love them!

So there you have it. In some ways? I feel? Like I’m getting a non-rigorous, de facto, homeschool PhD in… um, [hopefully] non-ego Self-development during this time? My diploma will be like, a piece of printer paper with unicorn stickers on it. That I made myself and got my mom to sign.

My life-hack-tastic to do list