Little Rituals

The image above is not of me but of a swimming friend named John. His life—at least the part I see at the pool—seems in balance. He starts with a ritual period of relaxation and meditation, and then he dives in to start his swimming workout. Slow and fast. Easy and hard. A miniature life in balance.

And so it is with me.

On this Balance of Days (the Autumnal Equinox)—when we’re halfway between the two solstices, when day and night are roughly equal all over the world—I like to think my life is in balance. At least, I strive for it. And as part of that goal, I appreciate my little daily rituals. They provide me not only slices of comfort but also a kind of structure to the day. A type of balance. For example . . .

Each morning, after feeding our cat, I make a fresh pot of coffee along with toast for the household. (I don’t eat the toast myself; I eat a piece of turkey and a cup of sliced banana with yogurt and walnuts). And I like to make a colorful presentation:

Then I move to my desktop computer where I catch up on news, check for any important emails, and print out the day’s New York Times Spelling Bee game.

I give a copy of the Bee to my wife and we check in with it over the day, trying to puzzle it out. The goal is to see how many 4+ letter words you can make that must also include the colored center letter. And the big challenge is to use ALL the letters in one word. That’s called the Pangram, and we usually get it, but not always. And, yes, we did solve the one shown above—can you see it? There’s only one correct answer and if you email me, I’ll give it to you.

After another short break when I do some stretching and a short meditation in a room suited to it, I move to my home office to start the writing/publishing portion of my day.

Although I normally work at my desktop computer, either writing, designing, or catching up or learning about subjects that interest me or require further research, I’ve recently been reading over the printed draft of my new novel: the third and final installment in the Neanderthal time-travel series. I have to get it to my editor soon.

I have a dark corner set up in one room with markers, postits, and notepads. And I read through the whole thing, jotting down notes as I go. Then I’ll take that back to the computer to make revisions. And repeat as needed.

By now, after writing and publishing several novels and novellas, every step along the way in the creation of a book is its own little ritual.

Then there are my daily physical rituals. In addition to eating right and getting enough sleep, I also do something physical each day for my health and fitness (and sanity). Two or three times a week I drive into town and hit the swimming pool for a mile-long workout and the all-important socializing at the end of the pool. On other days, I power hike around my property or do chores or needed outdoor projects. A recent one involved cutting down a dead tree.

It wasn’t a big tree, and it would have taken 10 minutes to do the job with a chainsaw. But instead, I decided to take my time using the incremental dynamics approach and make another ritual out of the effort. So every day for about a month, I made a few cuts with a small hand saw. Just a few. Little cuts. Then again the next day, a little deeper in. And the next day again. Finally, the tree fell with a loud thump and with a big smile on my face. Mission accomplished. One cut at a time.

And finally, at the end of the day I like to lie in bed with my wife, comparing Spelling Bee words, and usually watching a movie or TV show on one of our tablets. It’s a calming ritual that signals the day is done.

If a year of life equals one orbit of our planet around the sun, then each day in a life is one revolution or spin of that planet.

Our days are usually full and busy, but I find that my little rituals give a small sense of order to the day. At least for me. How about you?

— Harald

P.S. MORE NEWS…

1. CHOSEN! The first book of my NEANDER time-travel series is now in the running in the inaugural 2021 Self Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC). Submissions were winnowed down to the top 300 books, and NEANDER (Book 1) is one of them! Over the next year, 10 teams of reviewers and bloggers will read the books and pare them down to 10 finalists and eventually one winner. Cool, huh?

2. HOLLYWOOD? I was recently approached by a producer in Hollywood about acquiring adaptation rights to my debut novel NEW YORK 1609. It may or may not work out (Hollywood stories like this usually don’t), but you never know!