I have routines – lots of them. I say that I keep them or use them as a way to free up mental space for other things. Given my mental output, I’m not sure it’s working. I eat the same thing for breakfast almost every day: two waffles and two cups of coffee. On the weekends, I add two eggs and two pieces of bacon (big boy breakfast). In the morning I scan the headlines and sit at my computer – sometimes I write, sometimes I just sit, sometimes I long for better stimuli. I walk the dog at about the same time every morning. We take the same trip around the block – a counterclockwise square. I wear pretty much the same outfit to work every day: jeans and a button-down shirt. I have the same thing for lunch almost every day: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, two clementines, and a banana. After lunch, I make a cup of coffee and walk to get the mail. I call it my 20 seconds of sunshine. It’s seldom sunny, which makes it both funny and sad. If there are cookies in the office, I might have a cookie. I drive the same way to work every day and also the same way home. I get gas at one of the same two gas stations. I avoid doing extra errands on my way home – that would be a break from the routine (also I have a dog waiting to be let out). On Friday nights, I go to the same bar. Sometimes on Tuesdays or Thursday I go to different same bars (my Tuesday bar and my Thursday bar). I live a predictable life according to a predictable schedule.
Some days, when I think about all of these routines, I imagine myself as the main character in a Tom Hanks movie. A movie in which I wake up and do one little thing differently, or miss one of my steps. This cascades into a life of change. And while I can’t remember seeing it, I’m pretty sure this movie has been done a dozen different times.
If I think too much about my various routines, I can build a small monument of self-loathing… though loathing isn’t really the right word. It’s more of a mocking and questioning type of dissatisfaction. I stick to routines because they’re easy, but when I look at how much of my life is governed by routines, I begin to resent living on autopilot. After a while, life begins to look like a litany of days in which nothing new transpires. Life begins to look routine. With very few exceptions, I don’t do these things out of enjoyment. I do them because they’re easy. I don’t love pb&j or waffles or always walking the counterclockwise route. I just don’t want to think of alternatives. And not thinking seems to be the opposite of living. Under these circumstances, I begin to think I’ve focused my routines on the wrong things… or that there are parts of life in which I would do well to establish even more routines, better routines (exercise, reading, writing, walking, limiting screen time, etc.).
I sometimes wonder if a keen observer might be able to discern what’s important in a person’s life by watching their routines. That guy over there – he makes it a point to talk to his sister every Sunday, and that woman leads a support group on Mondays, this one’s religiously at spin class, that one drinks every night. I suppose some routines are an indication of what we value. In this respect my routines feel like they don’t measure up. Apparently, I value waffles in the morning and pb&j in the afternoon.
The impetus for my thinking here is that we’re heading into a new year and I’m contemplating resolutions and change. I’m looking at eventually moving and eventually starting a new job and maybe meeting new people and maybe getting another chance to establish “good” routines (or at least more productive routines). I joke about routines, but I suspect I’m also masking a deeper resentment to the stasis I’ve been feeling. Relying too heavily on routines feels like a type of walling off, a type of comfort born out of laziness or fear or exhaustion. After a while, I begin to think that I’m doing things because they’re easy or efficient when I would rather be doing things that are interesting. Is it possible that at the heart of these running-in-place routines and the eventual desire to break loose (shake things up) is the illusion of freedom and control? A resentment towards order and obligation and the overly-familiar? Could I have avoided this itch to blow everything up and move on if I had just changed my breakfast routine to include pastries every once in a while or decided to walk the dog in the other direction?