Routine - the enemy of time

Oh such a fitting title for this article given I’ve been scattered with my postings around here, though I tried multiple times to set a schedule on Sun or Mon for my blog posts.

But I also didn’t want to put any pressure on myself for any of my personal endeavours.

I heard this phrase one day somewhere in a YT video must likely and so been thinking a lot about this recently because there’s so much discussion on the internet about routine around everything that we do, whether it’s working out, or day to day “morning routine”, “night-time routine”, “skin care routine”, etc and I’ve been trying to accommodate some of these things into my life. Like workout especially, my blog posts and other things. I just can’t seem to stick to a very specific routine (like specific hours and repetitive actions) and I was trying to understand why.

So then I started questioning why we do this or why we think we need to do this for things in our lives to work the way we think they should. And I mean sure, you should have goals, and a plan of the milestones that you need to achieve to get there and intentionally work on them, but also why does it need to be pushed by this pressure of how and when to do things even if we don’t truly feel like it that particular day/moment. And I’m not saying that there’s something wrong with doing this, or being organized or that this strategy doesn’t works for some people, I guess that is the point, you have to do what you see and feel works for you and puts you in that flow state.

For me though, it seems to be a little different, I’m a very multi-passionate person with a variety of different interests and aspirations and I just pick an activity the moment I feel drawn to do it. Even with exercise,  I mostly do things at home , since going at the gym is no longer “a thing” but also the days I don’t feel like doing in-house stuff, I just go out for long walks and try to find hard terrain maybe where I have to go up and down an incline, etc, or carry things around the house, or even just hard cleaning.. some days I just don’t do any of it because that’s just how I feel like it that day.

Now.. going into my theory here of why I feel like sometimes routine can became the enemy of time and myself particularly is because to some extent it feels like I would get into doing all these planned things that sit on a “to do list” with the restriction of their pre-designated time and allocated slot, and it just can’t be any other ways. I guess on the one side it stems from my aversion to rules and being constricted and feeling my liberties are being cut down (even if it’s self imposed). 

It just makes me feel like my brain is trying to get into comfort zone and yes it is comfortable, but is it fulfilling?

But I also feel like it’s sucking the time for things that I feel like doing in that moment that’d make me feel happy and accomplished and inspired, and even more motivated, and somehow it ends up feeling like lost time. 

Setting life in these sequential boxes and setting too many rules and boundaries to what we do in a day, just the idea of it … I don’t know somehow just doesn’t fit with me. It just makes me feel like consumed time instead of useful and happy time which is what I feel life should be about.

Aaanyway I have no idea where this concept will take me or what other areas of my life it will expand to, but I feel it right in my heart, it resonates harder than anything else and I think it will eventually settle in to what will be the shape of a life I actually want to live and enjoy.