Habits and routines are SO important. Our habits today, good or bad, define who we will become. When something in life changes, it makes it easy for some of our good habits to fall by the wayside. Keeping solid routines and forming good habits has always been something insanely difficult for me to do. Usually, if one thing changed, everything would fall apart. But the last few years I’ve gotten way better at recognizing that pattern and finding the right reset points. Milking my cow every day was the best thing I’ve ever done as far as establishing a positive routine into which I could stack a whole host of healthy habits. But when I dried her off for the season, I found myself floundering. I hadn’t realized how many good things my daily milking routine had set into motion. So I figured out a good replacement habit: carving a spoon a day. It does the same things for me that may daily milking did: gave my days a sense of grounding. Got me a little exercise. Gave me some much needed introvert time. Gave me time to think and meditate. And just like that little dopamine hit I got from putting the milk in the fridge or adding another pound of butter or cheese to my freezer, seeing my little pile of spoons growing by the day makes me smile. Incidentally, spoon carving also happens to keep my popeye forearms in peak milking condition, and I’m learning a thing or two about spoon carving in the process.