Rhythm

Noun. Of the many definitions available from Dictionary.com, I find #7 most appropriate for my purposes: Procedure or routine characterized by regularly recurring elements, activities, or factors. I seem to have lost the ability to get my life into some kind of rhythm.

I have been trying to write this post for 2 months now. I think this is a perfect illustration of the lack of rhythm in my day to day life. It was actually inspired by a couple of posts from other people's blogs sometime back in August (Gail started me thinking on the topic, and then I think something Paul wrote brought it back to mind, but I never found the right words, and now I can't even find the specific blog posts that inspired my reflection on this topic,) and from the rhythmic clacking of my knitting needles hard at work this summer, and the soothing effect that they can have. I have not posted anything on this blog since then.

I always intend to blog on a regular basis. I have spurts where it does happen, and I always feel like I have accomplished something when I get into that swing. But then I get off track, and I let little things become inordinately large, and then nothing gets done. I find that I am this way about certain aspects of devotion- I set out, every spring around the start of Lent, to create some devotional time in my week apart from going to church on the weekends. I start off well enough, but after a couple of weeks in, I have failed to turn whatever addition I have made into a part of the rhythm of my week, the practice becomes more and more sporadic, and eventually fades into the realm of few and far between.

The start of a school semester brings that same kind of promise- I buy all my books, set up all my notepads, clean out my school bag, pack a lunch. I even set up a digital calendar so I could plot out the due dates across all 6 of my classes (which is how I know that come the 3rd week of November, I am going to want to kill people, based on the confluence of due dates between the 15th and the 20th of that month.) A month in now and my desk is a mess, my bag is a mess, and I am pretty happy if I remember to grab my wallet before leaving the apartment.

I was reflecting on rhythm again in class last week, and stray questions came to mind- is it the rhythm itself that people find satisfying? Is it the order that it brings that is so felicitous? I certainly would like a little more order in my chaotic life, but just a little, because I think I have ultimately wound up with this final thought: it is not the rhythm itself that makes the music of life, but the variation from the rhythm that draws our attention to the rarer beauty in the world.