And recently, I've been thinking a lot about routines and habits. I've been thinking about the positives and the negatives of each. Habits can be so small and also so big. I mean, there's the habit of checking Facebook every morning or your email, or it could also be the "habit" or tradition of celebrating birthdays and the new year. (More about this thought in a later post!)
Routines and habits have a lot of good aspects. When I'm studying or have a project to work on, nothing makes me productive like a good schedule or routine. For me, that particular set of circumstances is a cup of a particular kind of tea, classical music, and the ritual of lighting a small candle on my desk (if I'm working at home). But then again, nothing makes me feel that distinct kind of hollowness inside like being in the rut of habits and feeling powerless to get out of them.
Just these past few days have introduced me to some habits that I thought were lost. There's that pesky old foe of nail-biting, which I have battled for years, but where it only takes the pressure of an exam or a particularly difficult piece of work to dismantle my resolve. But another habit surfaced that I hadn't witnessed in a while – but I still call it a habit because it is my reaction to a specific set of circumstances.
The circumstances: excitement/stress about an activity (frequently, but not always, travel) very early the next day, for which my presence is absolutely necessary. Now, this doesn't include early morning classes or things of that nature. It's more like transatlantic flights or, in this circumstance, picking up my sister from the airport! In these situations, I wake up at some ungodly hour, am thoroughly convinced that every clock in my apartment/room is showing the incorrect time, and proceed to try to begin that activity that is supposed to happen. This happened most memorably during my first month of Freshman year, when I was a newbie on the crew team and we had practice every day at 5 a.m. and on the eve of one particularly important practice (I believe choosing who would be able to row in an upcoming race) I attempted to go to practice at 2 in the morning (fully dressed in my workout clothes, etc.) and was only stopped by someone who lived in my hall who happened to be coming back from a party while I stumbled sleepily out of my room. She managed to convince me to go back to bed and I remembered nothing of the incident until our eyes met at dinner the next day and it all came rushing back.
Okay, so maybe that's more of a quirk than a habit – but it is a repeated set of behavior. Sometimes habits make us keep to our plans, make us productive and comfortable in our environment. But sometimes routines make us blind to everything that isn't in our sights for the day, or make us forget the individual importance of the parts of our routine – like how good that cup of coffee tastes, instead of just drinking it without thinking.
But every now and then, I feel like the wires in our heads just cross somehow and we get that breach of routine, the breaking of a pattern, and it's like a packet of potential energy gets released when something unexpected happens. Usually, it results in surprise (meeting your friend on the subway you always take to work in the morning, for example). But sometimes, when you accidentally mess up a routine, the only reaction is hilarity. Such as yesterday, when I came home from picking up Rachel from the airport, came into the apartment and put my keys down on the counter. We greeted C and made some tea, hung around and were about to go out for a walk later, and my keys were nowhere to be found, least of all on the small nail in the wall near the door where they generally hang. Since then, we have been through every coat pocket, every shoe (they sit under the coats), and every trash can. We've searched under the couch, desk, kitchen table, behind the oven – everywhere. We looked and looked and found nothing. Now today, while we were making an apple rhubarb crumble, C and I were discussing making copies of all my keys since they were nowhere to be found, and I reached up to grab an oven mitt from the small nail that protrudes from the side of our cupboard – and lo and behold, there are my keys. The action of hanging the keys on a small nail in the vicinity of the front door was carried out, but it cracks me up. Putting phones in the refrigerator or losing your glasses while they are on your face – or pushing your "glasses" up your nose while you are, in fact, wearing contact lenses. We are so evolved, and yet sometimes, so thoughtless. Or maybe it's just me. But I don't think so.
Also, it's so lovely to have my sister here.
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