A simple little routine which improved my life - Euan McColm

It’s just after five in the morning and two black cats - one with a white bib - are engaged in a tense stand-off. They circle each other in the middle of the road, screeching and puffing themselves up.

Getting up at 5am has become a routine

Neither seems willing to make the first move and I know neither will. I’ve watched these cats carry out this routine two or three times a week for several months and it always ends the same way. Someone will open a door or start a car and they’ll scarper in opposite directions, faces saved until the next time.

I pour a second coffee and think about getting on the old exercise bike that I dragged into the front room in July.

Being a freelance writer, who works from home, I could, if I wished, linger in bed for most of the morning - except for those days when the boy and girl are here and must be dragged from their pits in time for school - but I’ve never been one for long lies. A sense of guilt soon creeps in if I wake late.

But getting up at 5am each day is a relatively new part of my daily routine.

Anxious by nature - like my late mother, I’ve a habit of answering the phone “what’s wrong?” - I’ve found the past few years as difficult as many of you have. During the depths of Covid lockdown, I found it increasingly difficult to sleep, instead lying awake worrying about loved ones, catastrophising about how the kids might have to deal with my sudden, premature death.

I know from the response to a piece I wrote back in the depths of pandemic that I was hardly unique in struggling to deal with the stress brought on by this frightening new virus. And, so, I am certain that there is nothing especially unusual in my experience of finding it difficult to readjust - after the vaccine roll-out - to some kind of normality. Once things have been thrown out of whack, restoring order is not necessarily straightforward. We may know that which was worrying us no longer poses the threat it once did but the subconscious mind can be a tricky swine.

Add to that the undeniable fact that the passing of time presents us with new challenges and responsibilities which we may feel inadequate to meet. Debt mocks us, past mistakes haunt us, cancer, like a sniper, picks off friends and former lovers.

Understanding ones powerlessness against some of life’s ambushes can be liberating. It can help us see clearly what matters (kindness and love) and what doesn’t (most of the bullshit that gets us in a fankle) but sometimes our vision remains blurred.

I have friends who find comfort in religion. For many years, I found their belief baffling, even ridiculous. More recently, I have grown to admire and envy those whose faith sustains them.

But devotion can’t be faked. You can’t force yourself to believe.

Perhaps, however, there is something in the rituals of religion from which even an atheist like me can learn.

It was while wondering about the possibility that this might be so that I decided, around five months ago, to make some changes.

I set myself a new routine which has seen me set my alarm for first six, then 5.30, and now 5am each day. It took some time for me to fight the urge to hit snooze but now I rise immediately and perform my Godless rituals.

No matter how sluggish, I feel, there is half an hour of exercise which I am yet to begin enjoying but from which I have started to feel the benefit, especially when carrying shopping up to the second floor flat I’ve been living in since Spring. After panting through eight or nine miles on the static bike, there is reading, generally poetry or a short story, something I can consume completely and think about.

I don’t know if what follows qualifies as meditation but I sit at my desk by the bay window and, conscious of my breathing, watch cats circle each other and early workers trot past until the sun is up.

Look, I know there is hardly anything special about man gets up early, does some exercise and looks out of the window but this simple little routine has improved my life. My sleeplessness is gone. By 10pm, I’m struggling to keep my eyes open and nothing will wake me until that alarm goes off. I think I am happier than I was. I think I am more at ease.

The worst of the pandemic may have passed but new reasons to be stressed are very much with us. Few of us are talking about the cost-of-living crisis in the abstract. This Christmas will, for too many, be a difficult time.

My mother made quite the deal of Christmas and, for shame, I was often guilty of being a bit snooty about her desire for things to be “just so”. I’d tease her that Christmas wasn’t like an M&S advert but as I get older, I understand that all she really wanted was the peace of mind that comes with knowing those you love are happy and free of worry, even just for a day.

It’s the same desire for peace of mind that has driven my recent lifestyle change. A better me, if such a thing can be created, can only be good for my friends and family.

Thanks for reading my columns, this year. I wish you all a happy and peaceful Christmas and, if that’s going to be difficult to achieve, I wish you better days ahead.