River Brown

The good things happen in ten-minute intervals.  It takes me about 10 minutes to make tea when I wake up.  I take the thermos of Earl Grey and a bone china cup out to the back yard.  For ten minutes I pedal the stationery cycle under the redwood tree.  Ten minutes of feeling the low thirties temps, seeing the moon heading for set, watching drips on the end of redwood leaves hanging overhead, noticing the first patch on the roof where sun melts the frost, listening to a few birds.  Then, after a few sips of the delightful brew, I do the arm revs with the light weights.

Indoors, I light a candle and sit in meditation for ten minutes.  Sometimes this is quiet and easy, although with school back on again, it takes most of the time to settle my thoughts.

I make a light muffin and microwave one egg with seasonings in a round gizmo, which makes a healthy egg macmuffin.  I set the time for ten minutes, enjoying my tea.  I check on my Words with Friends games or just read emails while I munch.

Then off to work, where the day gets divided more into half hour and three quarters of an hour chunks.  My walk after school — when I do it– takes almost an hour.

After making dinner for my mom and me, and doing necessary things like laundry, or bills, etc.  then I look forward to a ten-minute free write.  It is different than blogging because I really just blurt on the keyboard for 10 minutes.  Sometimes I never read them, but sometimes I go back through the doc and see if there was a seed of an idea.

And, while I love to get lost in a book, I’m still chewing through Peter Elbow’s book which is rather dense for me: Vernacular Eloquence.  So I give it about ten minutes in the evening.  If I get going, of course I read longer, but sometimes, ten minutes is all I can absorb.

Of course the nice thing about these ten minute rituals is that they’ve become habitual and I don’t have to think or push myself into them.  I also try to not worry too much about all the other lovely things I’d like to do that I might add in, because I have plenty right now.