Richard MacNeill's Blog: Literary Cowabunga! - Posts Tagged "quarantine"
A Whole Houseful of Bacon
I watch the pink sunrise. I watch the sunset. I teach my children to enjoy the beauty of life and be thankful.
We must make the time and space to achieve our dreams. When schedule changes occur, rearranging our routine, be fluid enough to rearrange when in each day you meet your needs rather than abandon the necessity to forgetfulness. Our happiness is all our own responsibility. Whether you have to get up early to read and write or snag the moments of kids fluctuating wildly from concentration to noisily teasing and fidgeting and arguing while also teaching and feeding them and trying to keep your house from being an unbelievable mess of laundry and dishes and random shit tossed across the floor of every room, this is simply what you have to do.
Here is an example of quarantine routine, to be seen and understood through interpretation into your own priorities. Whether you have kids or not, this translates into a way to ensure our inner needs are cared for. When I am actually doing it, this is how it is - Wake at five on the morning clock, drink water first, then make coffee and meditate while it’s brewing, drink coffee and write/read whichever book I am in, shower, stretch to the Sun and Earth giving silent thanks to life and then silently stand to listen to the Great Mystery, cleanse the home of self with sage and breathing meditation, strengthen and revive my body with physical exercise, then the kids start school and I eat while helping them. After school, we dance or play or paint while tea is brewing, then enjoy tea time and a story. Sometimes in the hotter months we make fruit smoothies. Afterwards, they do their chores as quickly or as aggravated as possible, and play. This is usually when I try to relax from a day being surrounded by five beautiful children who constantly need attention, who are an adorable barrage of strange, thoughtful questions about the universe. (You know how bacon gets lighter when it’s cooked, because so much of the water and fat gets cooked out? How much would fifty pounds of cooked bacon be? Probably a whole houseful of bacon.)
My work requires deep mental concentration, so it’s rare I have any time during the week to do the actual writing other than early morning, but another part of my work is advertising, so I often use this time to roll scrolls and tie them to the trees for anyone to read, or I may walk through the garden listening to the kids play. All the housework, activities, and appointments etcetera hereabove unmentioned exist and often seem unrelenting, but are a greater part of life not to be untouched by sight of how we can make them the best. Soon, it is time to make dinner.
This may sound like too much, but a routine is meant to be created and tried and reworked until it flows, and always reworked with the changing of tides, which has seemed for more than a year like constant high-tide. I always feel better when I keep to this than when I make coffee and get back into bed. I always want to lay down and cuddle my wife, but my mind is aggravated throughout the day when I feel like I’ve not completed a full day’s worth of achieving. Yes, it is good to give ourselves restful, unworried time, but do so consciously. It is easy to slip into unconscious habits repeating until they become how we live our lives.
To be worthy of the day is not to be overlooked or underestimated. I am a man; I am not a consumer. You can see how the day is born from night when you’re awake early enough to see it born. Having this time and space to wake up, to breathe and have some silence to be centered, before the neverending barrage of responsibility that is the heavy characteristic of modern life, is important. Those who are endlessly busy are endlessly unhappy. Nature is a priority, it is our true home, sunrise or sunset, midday or deep in night, find time to be in it.
Stay offline, stay away from ignorance, stay away from pollution and genocide excusers, plague deniers, and the endless arguments of idiotic repetition. True original thought can be found, but only by those who live it. There is new light to create, to see, and be alive in.
We must make the time and space to achieve our dreams. When schedule changes occur, rearranging our routine, be fluid enough to rearrange when in each day you meet your needs rather than abandon the necessity to forgetfulness. Our happiness is all our own responsibility. Whether you have to get up early to read and write or snag the moments of kids fluctuating wildly from concentration to noisily teasing and fidgeting and arguing while also teaching and feeding them and trying to keep your house from being an unbelievable mess of laundry and dishes and random shit tossed across the floor of every room, this is simply what you have to do.
Here is an example of quarantine routine, to be seen and understood through interpretation into your own priorities. Whether you have kids or not, this translates into a way to ensure our inner needs are cared for. When I am actually doing it, this is how it is - Wake at five on the morning clock, drink water first, then make coffee and meditate while it’s brewing, drink coffee and write/read whichever book I am in, shower, stretch to the Sun and Earth giving silent thanks to life and then silently stand to listen to the Great Mystery, cleanse the home of self with sage and breathing meditation, strengthen and revive my body with physical exercise, then the kids start school and I eat while helping them. After school, we dance or play or paint while tea is brewing, then enjoy tea time and a story. Sometimes in the hotter months we make fruit smoothies. Afterwards, they do their chores as quickly or as aggravated as possible, and play. This is usually when I try to relax from a day being surrounded by five beautiful children who constantly need attention, who are an adorable barrage of strange, thoughtful questions about the universe. (You know how bacon gets lighter when it’s cooked, because so much of the water and fat gets cooked out? How much would fifty pounds of cooked bacon be? Probably a whole houseful of bacon.)
My work requires deep mental concentration, so it’s rare I have any time during the week to do the actual writing other than early morning, but another part of my work is advertising, so I often use this time to roll scrolls and tie them to the trees for anyone to read, or I may walk through the garden listening to the kids play. All the housework, activities, and appointments etcetera hereabove unmentioned exist and often seem unrelenting, but are a greater part of life not to be untouched by sight of how we can make them the best. Soon, it is time to make dinner.
This may sound like too much, but a routine is meant to be created and tried and reworked until it flows, and always reworked with the changing of tides, which has seemed for more than a year like constant high-tide. I always feel better when I keep to this than when I make coffee and get back into bed. I always want to lay down and cuddle my wife, but my mind is aggravated throughout the day when I feel like I’ve not completed a full day’s worth of achieving. Yes, it is good to give ourselves restful, unworried time, but do so consciously. It is easy to slip into unconscious habits repeating until they become how we live our lives.
To be worthy of the day is not to be overlooked or underestimated. I am a man; I am not a consumer. You can see how the day is born from night when you’re awake early enough to see it born. Having this time and space to wake up, to breathe and have some silence to be centered, before the neverending barrage of responsibility that is the heavy characteristic of modern life, is important. Those who are endlessly busy are endlessly unhappy. Nature is a priority, it is our true home, sunrise or sunset, midday or deep in night, find time to be in it.
Stay offline, stay away from ignorance, stay away from pollution and genocide excusers, plague deniers, and the endless arguments of idiotic repetition. True original thought can be found, but only by those who live it. There is new light to create, to see, and be alive in.
