Routine

I just about forgot to post today. It’s a matter of my schedule getting disrupted. I’m going to Des Moines for a couple of internship visits, and we’re supposed to be out the door by 8 AM. I was going to sit on the couch and veg until Richard said he was going to make coffee, and I realized that I sit on the loveseat and drink coffee at this point of the morning.

I didn’t consider myself such a lover of routine, but I get discombobulated when my routine changes. My brain locks into a new groove and I forget what I’m supposed to be doing. I understand that people with ADHD have a love of routines, but I don’t know if I actually have ADHD. (At my age, getting tested wouldn’t change anything). I just need my routine.

I don’t like transitions. My routine gets obliterated when the school year ends, and again when the new school year begins. I want to lay in bed and hibernate when a routine changes. I don’t, because I feel guilty when I don’t get up and do something.

My brain is really strange to me. Why do I need routines? Why do I stall out when my routine is broken?

Bitter Cold

It’s bitterly cold out, with a windchill of -25. Our university has a late start this morning, with nobody coming in till noon today. That’s right in time for my classes, which are all in the afternoon today.

I don’t like days like this. I like my routine, and if my routine gets disrupted, I wish they’d disrupt it all the way and give me a day off. I understand where they’re coming from — losing half a day of instruction is not as bad as losing the whole day, and the temperatures are going up (to a -15 windchill). Just because I function well with a change in my routine doesn’t mean I like it.

Dull February

It’s still February, and I could use a change of pace.

When I was younger, I would wish for something weird to happen when I felt like this. It didn’t happen as often as I wanted it to; I don’t know what made me so much of a drama queen back then.

I understand the sentiment, however. My life has become predictable, tedious, and dull. To work and then home. Eat at A&G on Friday (it’s Greek Night, of course). Work, writing. Sometimes I go to Starbucks to write.

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

I would like something unpredictable (in a good way) to happen.

Are there good unpredictable things that happen? Or are unpredictable things only tied to dire diagnoses and loved ones dying (neither of which I want)?

Am I just asking the universe for a cosmic cookie? And what’s the problem with that?

Spring Break comes in just two weeks (and a day). Maybe I’ll be able to find a change of pace then.

Experiencing Very Little

Not much to say today. I’m in quarantine as usual. I desperately need coffee as usual. Classical music is playing in the background as usual. I’m beginning not to be able to tell the days apart, except Richard is home all day on Saturday and Sunday. The cats are being bad as usual. The view outside my window is quiet as usual.

Although onism is the realization that one will not experience all there is to offer, it’s doubly poignant now with all the ordinary things we’re missing: funerals, weddings, high school graduations. Regular schedules. Daily rituals at the coffeehouse. Extended peer groups.

It’s okay to mourn or even resent the strictures put on us at the moment. But stay safe. There’s so much we don’t know about the virus yet, and what we know is sobering. We need these quarantines to control the number of sick who need extraordinary measures so that hospitals don’t get overwhelmed. But have your feelings, and go on practicing safe existence with social isolation, wearing masks outdoors, and handwashing.

I will never be able to experience all things in this world. But I’m making a list of what I want to experience when this is over.

Routine and Discipline

Scheduling writing has been a pain lately. Remember yesterday, when I was so excited to write? By the time I drove around Kansas City, visited an intern, and wrote a major homework for my online class, I was no longer in any shape to write.

But that’s why I write the blog every morning — so at least I’ve written something. No matter how short, no matter how trivial, no matter how moody. No matter how much I don’t feel it.

Without routine, I would forget I was a writer during busy times like these. I would forget how to write and all the lessons I’ve learned along the way. I would lose my identity as a writer.

In other words, even when I don’t write, I write.

Of weak coffee and wistful waiting

My coffee tastes a little weak this morning.

My husband usually makes the coffee, and he has learned to make it to the strength I prefer. He’s in Kansas at a funeral, however, and I made my own coffee this morning.

My morning routine has been broken — we usually get up around 5 AM (me bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, him not so much) and sit together for breakfast and coffee and sharing cat memes on the Internet. Now I’m on my own and it’s 6 AM and very quiet in here. I’m trying to share cat memes with Buddy the Cat, but he remains disinterested.

It’s been less than 24 hours since he left, and I miss Richard. It’s been over ten years married, and I still miss Richard. Not in a huge heart-rending way, but in the little things. I imagine this would be a hard thing, maybe the hardest thing to bear, if he died before I did — the low-key, everyday presence.

He’ll be home about 7, 34 hours after I last saw him. No big deal. Just … when you’re older, love is less about passion and more about sharing cat memes.

A Pattern to my Days

As a professor, summer has a different pattern than the rest of the school year. The belief is that professors are “off for the summer”, and that’s generally not true for the faculty I know. The focus of our work changes, and we teach more concentrated courses and hold our office hours in Starbucks. We do research projects and revamp classes and write, and we may supervise internships and field experiences.

I’m currently splitting my days into three parts. Early in the morning, instead of writing this blog, I work on the next week in my drastic revision of People, Money, and Psychology. Instead of running it as a cognitive psychology class about money, I’m creating a class about poverty and all the ways it’s not just about lack of money. I’m two-thirds the way through the lesson plans. The rest is easier once I have a shape to the class.

After that, I write the blog. Not that I don’t love all twenty-something of you, but I have to give my freshest coffee-fueled brain cells to the classwork first. I haven’t felt too inspired lately on the blog front, and I apologize.

Finally, my day is split between getting some sort of walk in, editing Voyageurs, and planting plants in my soon-to-be amazing garden.

So what are you up to today?