Rituals for moving on, others are hard to let go of

My book writing is progressing, slowly.  Today I am mixing it up with writing this blog post.  

Summer time is now spent with family and preparing for more returns to 'normality'.  

One of my bosses recently said that the world has moved and cannot wait for us to take a breath or slow down.  In the food chain of education, other institutions or governments decide what needs to happen, and we follow suit.  Not much of this has really changed, except perhaps that we are bit more allowed to work remotely. 

Yes, it is time to move on, but also it is hard to let go of other things, I am finding.  

Human beings need some sort of structure, I heard recently.  We had to set up routines during lock-downs, and we had to start giving them meaning.  Some of them have become rituals.  Things to keep us afloat, to help us navigate the world. Myself, I am now doing some Pilates and short running.  I also have gone back to my cafe writing.  And I have planted new flowers in my garden.  

If you ask me why I do these things, well, they help me keep a good mood.  And the more I do them, the less I need to explain or justify them to myself or other people.  I am preparing for the winter.  

Finding hard to let go of driving to work, to email people to express my worries, to become silent or isolated when not feeling very well.  My ritual of self-berating or catastrophic thinking is still here: it does not have much more meaning anymore, but I grew up using it to cope with my circumstances.  Why is it hard to let go of?  

Maybe it is because I fear that if I let it go, I will not be appreciated, I will not succeed, I will not be loved.  A hard thought I think, A thought that allowed me to survive and to 'move on', a thought that can fuel many of our desires to act, or to live.

But then I will have to disagree with my boss.  I do not need to move on, not at least based on fear of approval.  My morning ritual has started to include gratitude for just being alive, and for reassuring myself that whatever life throws at us, we will be OK.