What is Your Relationship to Your Daily Routine?
A few months ago, independent and freshly self employed, I decided to forego routine. I worked till early in the morning, slept till noon, ate between one and eight meals a day. I was being productive; I was meeting my deadlines- why not? I thought I had designed a life of total freedom, a life to be envied. Wasn’t this what everybody wanted?
It turns out that what I found was entropy, innumerable and undistinguishable steps down a long and dismal flight of stairs.
Somewhere in adulthood, I’d grown to believe that routine was synonymous with monotony. And nothing was more reprehensible than monotony. A fixed schedule full of daily chores would be the end of spontaneity, the antithesis of adventure. And oh, I want adventure. And If I’m ever going to be adventurous, and successful, and glamorous, than what am I doing standing over the sink chipping dried egg off of plates? Normal life, with all its repetition, all its normality, scared the sh*t out of me.
I battled this fear by doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. My potted plants wilted. Bills piled up. The writing I produced was erratic and out of touch.
Life gets a little more complicated when you’ve shed the diurnal rhythm. I’d realize at 2 in the morning that I needed to get the oil changed. In the middle of the afternoon, when everyone else was busy at work, I’d be doing laundry in my pajamas. I became very isolated very quickly.
Overwhelmed and out of sync, I began to sing the swan song of the depressed: what’s the point? Why unload the dish washer today when I’ll have to do it again tomorrow? Suddenly, the concept of a routine was no longer simply undesirable, it seemed utterly futile. The thought began to drive me under.
Why did I ever think I was capable of escaping the cyclic nature of the universe? The whole world is a pattern of day to night, season to season, trips around the sun. In a world of neat numbers I wanted to be pi, unpredictable, running wildly on and on.
My fiction teacher helped me turn things around. Write what needs to be written, was her mantra. Write all the crappy stuff that needs to come out and in whatever time you have left, write the good stuff.
Late December, a year into my self employment, I try to apply the same thing to life. Before giving into that crevasse of uncertainty and self doubt, just do what needs to be done. In whatever time is left, then I can tackle the extraordinary things. It turns out, those everyday things can prove very satisfying. Maybe I’m not as adventurous as I once thought. Then again, maybe I just gained some common sense.
At the end of each day, I stand outside on my porch with the dog, turn on the white lights strung above my head, and bang the aluminum lid down on the recycle bin. There is a sting in the air and I pull my jacket tightly around myself. The uncertainty of money and love and location looms, probably forever, But the passing year is less bewildering when it’s broken down into days that begin and end with these small, mindful structures.
A routine exists because we are part of the larger picture that is constantly looping, and we are programmed to crave a certain amount of predictability. Parents try desperately to put their children on a schedule because without one, everyone would lose their minds.
I know I almost did.
