15. Are you your routine?
And how we all hold the possibility for change
Hi, this is you are here, a newsletter that is constantly rethinking the labels it wants to identify itself with. If you’re new here, check out the about section or read previous issues here. Welcome (back)!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about routines and change in our lives, especially as we get older. The structure of a routine is an easy thing to define oneself by. Some people like to travel, so their lives float around the holidays. Some people like to do theatre, or tango, or gin rummy, so their lives are defined by week after week of the social relationships they build around that. Some people take their morning tea or coffee prepared in the same way, in the same mug, for years.
As somebody who once moved five times in the span of two years, most of my life has been characterised both by peripateticness and the sort of self-regulating routines I have been able to create within that. I find myself tending to hug to a loose structure of sorts as a response to changes in my environment - when everything around you is changing, all you have as a constant are the people you hold close, the activities you lean towards, and yourself. For me, that has settled into mornings that start with tea and some sort of movement or writing, and a regular weeknight rotation of activities (quiz, comedy, art, food/movies) that allows me to systematically tug at the many threads floating around in my head.
I believe that routines can be helpful in so many ways. Among others:
To transition into activities or places (e.g. starting the work day by getting a glass of water or coffee and opening up your computer; travelling somewhere and unpacking your bags immediately so you can feel more at home),
As a reset for us to anticipatorily recharge our mental and physical batteries so we can show up as our full selves in some areas of our lives (e.g. an after-work snack or cuddle with a pet when you arrive home; choosing to walk or listen to a particular podcast on the way somewhere),
To create structure or consistency, which can be a form of comfort in a world where not everything can be taken for granted (e.g. doing the laundry on Tuesday evenings; having pizza and a movie on Sundays),
To help cultivate and nurture habits, social relationships or aspects of our identity (e.g. working out in the mornings; doing pub trivia every Monday with the same group of friends; travelling to Greece every summer).
I also find that routines, like us, sort of gradually change as time goes on. This is the nature of things. Rivers slowly erode banks to change their course, mountains get taller and shorter, the sun changes its location throughout the year, we sharpen and soften and change our minds. Life is repeatedly finding ways back to ourselves and our own shapeshifting equilibrium, even as how we do that may vary.
I was once told about a study that measured where people walk every day and that it found that there was very little change in how much people deviated from the same path each day, down to the centimetre. We all do that in some ways - in choosing the same breakfast or way to brew a cup of tea, in having the same settling in and wind up routines, in choosing the same playlists, the same gym routine, the same pool, the same cosy group of friends or vacation houses or meal rotations, year after year after year. Predictability, but cosy.
And cosiness is great until it starts to feel ever-so-slightly boring, or like quicksand you are too deeply mired in to ever consider the possibility of change. We are Ships of Theseus composed of our tastes and preferences and how much we choose to define ourselves by the things we do. In declarations like “I take my coffee black”, “I don’t dance”, and “I always go to x restaurant on Thursdays”, who is the ‘I’ really, and does that identity come from knowing a preference or from the comfort of tying that identity to an arbitrary fact?
The question that follows for me is: how can we practise non-attachment to our routines? How can we tune into them when they enable us to thrive, and let go of or challenge them when they start to feel like they are over-defining our perceptions of ourselves? When you hear yourself linking your ideation of yourself to something you routinely do, why don’t you try another way?
I remember reading about another behavioral science study* that studied people forced to take alternate routes to work because their regular commutes had been blocked by construction. It found that even six months after the change, a large number of people stuck with the new route, even stating they preferred it to the first. The results can either be interpreted to show just how tied we are to our routines, even new forced ones, or that we have the capacity for change, even finding joy in it.
When routines are intentional, they can become rituals. When they are not, they can feel like ruts. Treading the fine line between rituals and ruts requires a subtle reshifting of how and when we define them as we settle into the many homes we make in our lives.
What are some routines, rituals and ruts you find yourself leaning into?
Just reply to this email or post a comment to share.
Links!
On routines and ruts: this podcast on by Madeleine Dore
On change: this post on what’s going on Substack as this newsletter continues to search for a home
On how change can happen: this video of a talk/panel I did at the International School of Geneva about the future of work and the role of young people in it
That’s all for now, folks. If you liked this email, or it made you think of someone, pass it forward!
* The name of this study and the other one is fuzzy, as I’m sure are the details, despite intensive searching, so if you have more info on them, send me a fact check!
Months later, I finally remembered to read this issue.
I loved it.
My routine over the past four months changed radically since I was in a theater workshop.
We presented The Comedy of Errors a couple of weeks ago and will have three more showings this weekend.
It altered my routine, it altered me, and I discovered something about myself: I need to play as I did when I was a child, and the theater is the way to do it.
But I also miss my previous routine, which led to a second discovery: we sometimes need to change our routine to miss and appreciate the old one and return to it feeling refreshed.
The way I see it, it is just like when we travel. It's fun and exciting and wonderful, but part of that beauty lies in the fact that it makes us miss home.