IndieWeb Carnival: Rituals

This is my entry for August’s IndieWeb Carnival. Steve Ledlow is this month’s host and the topic is Rituals.

Changes

I recently changed a ritual that I had running daily for ten years: Grinding our coffee beans each morning with a hand-crank grinder. There is a physical, almost meditative, aspect to it I enjoyed, but it was no longer really working for our mornings, and the base was in need of repair. We switched to a Baratza, which I’m hopeful will last us another ten years. I was resistant for a while because of the sound, but after using it for a week I’ve been pleasantly surprised. The Baratza Virtuoso isn’t that loud, the grind size is better than the hand grinder we were using, and with the timing function we don’t have to measure the beans out anymore.

We still manually brew the coffee in a Chemex, so we haven’t completely switched over to the dark electrical side. I suppose part of the morning coffee ritual lives on.

Speaking of changes to rituals, I had been blogging weekly for two years when I decided to take a break for the summer. I am a big fan of weekly blogging as a chance to stop and reflect, but it felt like it was getting in the way of life. I needed a break. Since I’m writing a blog post now, perhaps I’m nearing the end of that break. We’ll see. I’m not going to start posting weekly again immediately, but I do have a few posts I’d like to ship while I ease back in.

Do you have any long-standing rituals that no longer serve you? Perhaps changing will yield different results than you expect.

Seasonality

If we take a loose approach to rituals, I very much enjoy the changing of the seasons here in NY, and seek out and immerse myself in the headspace these seasonal activities put me in:

Summer

Rowing out on the Hudson in the early morning and late afternoon

Picking tomatoes with Charlie, then peeling them and making sauce

Walking with Charlie while he rides his bike along the riverfront trail

Pushing Charlie on swings

Enjoying ice cream at the Blue Pig

Enjoying pizza outside at Baci’s Woodfire Tuesdays

Sipping coffee on the deck in the morning

The taste of fresh, ripe blackberries and peaches

Walking with Amanda and Charlie at the beach

Witnessing Charlie’s unbridled joy while playing with the water hose

Autumn

Enjoying a cocktail on the porch with a fire in the chimenea

Trick-or-treating with Charlie and friends

Reading while listening to the rain

Soup simmering on a chilly Friday afternoon

Eating apple cider donuts after picking some apples to make pie and apple butter

Cool, chilly mornings

Baking cinnamon bread

Winter

Walking in the quiet woods while snow falls

Listening to the partially frozen creek

Turning Christmas ornaments on the lathe

Seeing the pileated woodpeckers again in the winter woods

The smell of smoke from a wood fire

Spring

Checking on newly sprouted seedlings for our summer garden

Picking daffodils for the mantle

Seeing the skunk cabbages first emerge in the woods

Seeing the robins return and search for bugs in the yard

Picking the first early radishes from the garden

Going for a walk without a jacket on the first warm day of the season

Children

Children thrive on routine and get thrown off balance when things change. While thinking about writing this post, I realized that perhaps the cause of difficult bedtimes and middle-of-the-night wake ups this week are because we’ve been staying up later than usual and going straight to bed instead of our normal bedtime routine of snuggling and reading Charlie a couple books before turning out the light. Tonight we’ll get back to that ritual.