And to start off a new week, here’s a question--when is a routine a routine, and when is a routine a rut?
I’ve been wondering about that quite a bit recently. With the holidays just wrapping up and the ever-increasingly insane schedule of the three “Jims”, especially with everything I have coming up in the next few weeks, whatever routine I used to have was thrown out the door. Before all that, I had found myself doing certain things on certain days, and looking forward to doing those certain things on certain days. I knew I had to get specific things done on Mondays, other things on Tuesdays, and even more different things done on all days of the week leading up to the weekend, where I had yet another normal routine--I’d go running on Saturday morning, go grocery shopping later in the day on Saturday, and lounge around Sunday morning while trying to convince myself it’s time to work out. I’d look forward to doing the things I had to do on certain days, and if I didn’t do them on certain days, I felt, well, strange.
So is it a routine, or is it a rut?
I used to think that because of the insane schedule that runs my life that I could never get into a rut. And that might very well be the case; after all, while I do do certain things on certain days, it may be because those are the only days on which I can do those certain things. If I don’t do them then, I wouldn’t be able to do them at all. And maybe I feel strange when I don’t do them because I feel I need a little routine to balance out the insanity.
I’m not saying routines are a bad thing; I’m not even sure that a rut could be considered a bad thing. Like I said, a little routine (or rut) is a good thing when trying to balance out an insane schedule during an insane time in history. It gives you something you know and you’re comfortable with to look forward to, as opposed to all the unknown (or infrequent) activities that pop up here and there. I don’t mind that at all.
And yet, there’s a small part of me that always thinks that you should be pushing yourself forward, attempting things you’ve never done before, trying to find a different way to carry off old activities, or rearranging a schedule to stop it from becoming stale. I don’t know where that part of me comes from; it’s just there, and it seems to pop up whenever I’m trying to convince myself that a routine is a nice thing to have. So maybe, in a way, what's happening to me has been a good thing, if for no other reason than it made me realize that I do, for better or worse, have a “routine”.
See? It really isn’t easy being me, is it? Sometimes these discussions with myself can just be draining. They really can.
8-)
If you have a routine, and it’s a routine with which you feel comfortable, go for it. Enjoy it. Revel in it. After all, everybody needs a certain level of comfort in their life, especially after what we've been through the past two years. But if you feel the need to shake things up a little, go ahead and shake it up. You might find that your new way of doing things work fine . But if it doesn’t, go back to your old routine. Just try not to obsess over whether it’s a routine or a rut.
After all, some of us do that enough for everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment