To routine or To not routine
Time has been flying by me lately. As I sit here, the clouds of an impending 3-day thunderstorm are rolling in, their clouds chasing north across the city. Each day has felt like a blink, and each evening I get to myself, I feel like it’s being stolen.
I saw this pie graph on Instagram, maybe 8ish years ago while in high school, and it has always lingered in my mind. It was a pie graph divided into hours in a day and what activities to fill your time with. There was socializing, work, good sleep, recreation, and exercise. I tend to focus on work and sleep in the winter months, whereas I’m currently trying to push as much exercise and socializing as possible. I am spending days seeing friends, running, and keeping my schedule of trying to participate in life. Maybe it’s because I’m having so much fun participating, but this full daily schedule is making time go by too quickly.
It seems that any downtime I have, I am either going for a walk, going for a coffee, organizing a bookshelf, or redecorating the balcony. I’ve been reading a book or two a week because I have a Goodreads goal that I refuse not to reach come December 31. I’ve been calling my sister weekly, talking for hours while I get a few hours of deep cleaning in.
On Saturday of this past weekend, I filled every hour with an activity or errand, and the few hours I had of downtime, I opted to clean both Grace’s and my car. Like, girl? Sit the hell down??
I’m no psychoanalyst, but I am very self-aware, and this all seems like a lot to me. I wonder where every to-do box is checked, where every duck is in a row, and where each person in my life is accounted for. Am I truly satisfied? Or am I reaching an unattainable goal? Maybe I will be happy if I complete every box in my head? Or is this just life? Is life just a never-ending to-do list? At the end of the day, I’m 24 and I’m just trying to figure this all out.
Sometimes, I miss the days when I wasn’t planning my months. Sometimes, I miss spontaneous parties at my college house, not knowing who I would be kissing that weekend, and the feeling of ambiguous uncertainty. All that to say, at the end of the day, I am exponentially more stable now. I have two cats to feed twice a day, I make color-coded grocery lists, I pay a wifi and electric bill, and am lucky to have a partner who loves me more than anything.
When things in my life start going smoothly and I find a successful routine, as I have now, I fear it scares me. What is frustrating is that there were days when I’d dream of a life like this. Not hungover every morning, owning pets and a homey apartment, and good sleep where my roommates aren’t screaming late at night. But this little voice in my head always wants to sabotage all of this. It tricks me into thinking uncertain spontaneity is true happiness. It’s this constant back and forth where I just need to find a center, a middle ground. Not too spastic and unreliable but also not too rigid and angsty.
I can’t count how many times I’ve gotten to this point, where I’m super scheduled and routinely where I beg something exciting to happen to me. What exactly would be exciting, you may be thinking? Sometimes, I wish that drama would start in my life between friends or that somebody would get spontaneously fired at work. Other times, it's darker wishes, like getting into a car accident or somebody in my family getting sick. These thoughts of wishing something ‘interesting’ would happen to me are intrusive and damaging. When I sit on these thoughts, I don’t want to cause harm to my loved ones. This is usually the signifying thought pattern that wakes me up.
I’m the healthiest I’ve been in months with more exercise, fewer dark thoughts, seeing my friends frequently, little to no binge drinking, fewer tears, and excellent sleep. So, who is this dark passenger sneaking into my psyche, trying to fuck it all up for me? Is this a cry for attention that I don’t self-fulfill? Is it mourning over the passing of exciting adolescence? I understand that deep down, mental illness can’t cure itself, and no matter how hard I try, I’ll always feel it a little bit. But it’s frustrating, simply put. I get angry quickly, cry over dropped keys, and slam my phone when I can’t get an app to work. No matter how bad I want to be normal, predictable, and sane, I will always be me. I am with quick emotions, fast judgments, and all-too-readable facial expressions. Maybe that scares me the most: no matter how I try to work on myself, it will still be me. Please don’t take this as I loathe the person I am. I’m funny, I’m kind, I’m charismatic, and I am empathetic. It just sucks that you can’t outrun the person you are.
After all this, I still don’t know the answer to this eb and the flow I am running through. Is it more noble to just shut up and follow the well-oiled machine? Or is it righteous not to be anchored by these mundane expectations of adulthood?
