Today, the sun rose at 4:30. I gave up on sleep about an hour later. Journal in hand, I set off to visit the shrine1 then sit in the park. The shrine and park are next to one another and only a few minutes walk from my home. The shrine itself is a personal favorite and I visit almost every day. I can’t quite figure out exactly how old it is, but it appears to have been founded at least 1,250 years ago.
After throwing my coin and saying a prayer, I went to the park and sat in a bench, journaling for a while then meditating. About five minutes into my meditation, though, I was reminded of why I don’t meditate in the park at that time – rajio taiso! If you’re not familiar, this is an exercise program that’s broadcast on the radio2 every morning at 6:30, and every day a group of a couple dozen retirees congregates in the park to do it together. One of them brings a radio and plays it at full volume.
This is fine, but a bit difficult to meditate through, so I wandered around the neighborhood for a bit instead, before returning home to make breakfast for my partner.
When I was younger, I was never the type to enjoy getting up early. My whole life, I’ve been the sort to stay up late into the night. And I still love the evening in that way, but the older I get, the more I enjoy the early morning. I hadn’t intended on getting up at 5:30 today, but with the sunrise being so early, it became the natural choice when I just couldn’t get back to sleep.
It seems silly to be dissatisfied with a morning like this, but I have to admit I am, though just a little bit. In addition to the journaling, etc, I did some cleaning and decluttering, washed the dishes, potted up my shiso3 seedlings, watered the plants that needed it, and made sure my new blog post was properly scheduled to go up at noon. Mind you, this is all before going off to work.
So why dissatisfied? Because I meant to do my core exercises, but didn’t. These consist of kettlebell swings, pushups, pullups, squats, and bicycle crunches. I’ll be too busy after work and don’t want to get too wound up before bed, so I’ll just have to try again tomorrow. Due to a recent depressive relapse, I fell out of my exercise habit and am trying to re-establish it. It’s good for me and I enjoy the benefits of it, but if I don’t get it done in the morning, it’s not going to get done.
It’s easy to get impatient when you want to make positive changes in your life. Change happens somewhat slowly in most cases, though, so patience and persistence are really where the difference is made.
Finally, I’m working on another topical post, which will hopefully be up by the end of the week. It will be on the topic of the way my new job is proving to actually be a good fit for the moment, including in how it’s allowing me to make important changes incrementally in the course of daily life. It’s not a job I want to stay in, but it’s good for right now.
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調神社, Tsuki Jinja/Tsuki Shrine in Urawa, Saitama City. Link (Japanese) ↩︎
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ラジオ体操 is literally radio exercise, and is a set of calisthenics done to simple music. You can see the movements in this video on YouTube ↩︎
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Perilla frutescens var. crispa, an herb in the mint family widely used in Japanese cooking, Wiki ↩︎
