Road Trips and Rituals

ways to rest and reset

Current Quest: Bone Deep

Developing: learning to be present in your body

Description: I spend a lot of time inside my head, so I often struggle to be present in my physical surroundings. This quest will focus on slowing down, paying attention to what’s around me, and feeling more comfortable in my own skin.

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Late summer is a time for slowing down. It’s the one time (besides the time between Christmas and New Year’s) when you’re allowed to exist in a haze. No plans, no goals, just vibes. It’s too hot to do anything, everyone’s on vacation, and no one is responding to emails. July is for laid-back roadtrips, staycations, and napping on the couch.

I went to Virginia with one of my best friends to visit her family over the July 4th weekend. The long drive and slow weekend gave us time—time to unpack and understand one another better, time to learn and compare family dynamics, time to sit around and watch reality TV. It was the perfect summer road trip.

The summer haze has been thick for me this year. Most of my family is out of the country, and I’ve been wrestling with some serious career fatigue. Possibly it’s an imminent quarter-life crisis (I turn 25 in August!), but probably it’s just that I need to slow down. Take some time to rest. To reset.

Everyone has rituals they use to reset—something they do to signal a fresh start. Some people clean the kitchen and start the dishwasher, some take a nap after work, some go on a walk. I have two that I use regularly: one I’ve used for a very long time, and one that’s newer.

Ritual 1

Once, as I was getting ready for bed at my college dorm room sink, my roommate told me something I’ll never forget. She said, “I love how you wash your face. I’ve never seen you skip a night. Even if you’ve had an awful day and we’re going to bed at 3 AM, you still take the time to wash your face and apply your skincare, in the exact same order, every night. It’s like you’re saying, ‘Ok, the day is over now. We’ll start again tomorrow.’ I just think it’s really cool.”

I’m not sure when that ritual started, but she was right—to my knowledge, I’ve never skipped a night. I even did it on a plane once, in a tiny bathroom halfway over the Atlantic. It’s my way of closing out the day, separating one sun cycle from the next.

Ritual 2

I used to say I hated tea. As a child, I would drink anything—even plain water—before I’d accept a glass of tea. As a teenager, I was firmly a coffee drinker. Then, I tried warm black tea with cream for the first time, and realized that I’d only ever had two kinds of tea: Southern sweet tea that was mostly sugar and supermarket tea bags that tasted like cough drops or grass. Real tea is completely different and has actual flavor. My world was forever altered. These days, I stock loose-leaf tea alongside my coffee beans.

Making tea is an exercise in precision. You need to pay attention to temperature—black and green teas need different heat levels. Most teas also have short brewing times, so you can’t finish folding laundry while you wait for the tea to brew, or it’ll be bitter by the time you finish. It’s a ritual that forces you to focus. To reset. To wait.

Find a way to tell yourself that the day is over, or that it’s just beginning. Turn it into a ritual. Slow down. Just breathe.

Probably napping,

Kat