I live an ordered life by choice. I’ve found myself to be a bit of a handful over the years—someone who can be completely distracted by a bird flying by the window, leaving a train of thought parked on a siding with potentially no hope of finding it again.
Being of that sort of character, I have come to realize that I need to be bundled into a routine if I am to ever pull off a single thing. I’ve come to rely on my routine—one that lays out daily exercise, meal planning, household chores, and even writing—and I take great comfort in it. Abnormal comfort even. To me, having a strict-ish routine, one that places me at a certain spot on a certain day accomplishing a certain task, allows me to feel like I’m moving ahead without even trying. At the end of the week, I can look behind me and be glad that I have followed through on the many tasks that I had wanted to complete. Mundane though most of them are. Although that may sound responsible and mature, in essence it is just me-the-adult ordering me-the-child to finish their chores so they can go out and play with their friends.
I miss the days of having my parents telling me what to do. These days, for instance, if I come to an intersection on the street, no one grabs my hand, watches for traffic, and makes sure I get across safely. Usually. When I open my closet, I can’t grab out clothes that are guaranteed to be clean and wrinkle free unless I have consciously noticed that they needed washing and (occasionally) ironing, in advance. In my present life I know exactly what’s going to be for dinner every single night because I’ve planned the menu and bought the groceries.
Clearly, I treated my mother like a servant when I was growing up. I have regrets.
Since, quite obviously, there is a large part of my personality that still clutches onto the long-ago mindset that someone will magically take care of the details of life for me, over the years I’ve had to become my own babysitter in order to ensure that I leave the house periodically, that I don’t weigh the same as a grand piano, that the friends I have been gifted with still speak to me, and so that we aren’t tossed out of our apartment and into the back lane.
That’s where my obsession with a personal routine comes into play.
Without a firm hand (in the guise of my normal routine) to guide my day, you would inevitably find me on the couch surrounded by empty chip bags and sporting a ‘TV headache’ at all times of the day or night. Instead, through the beauty and magic of my personal routine I am organized to the hilt, juggling all of the balls, and all of my ducks are neatly in a row. This bucolic lifestyle works like a well-oiled machine.
Until December 25th.
From Christmas Day until sometime in mid-January, I eschew the routine that I cling to and normally execute with military precision. And I know I’m far from alone.
Ahhh, The Holidays. Two weeks that are lost to time. Where calories are fake news and laziness is protocol. Businesses operate on whatever schedule suits them and half of the city leaves to fly home to their families in other places (a total bonus of living in a city where only 33% of the population was raised here!). At no other time throughout the year does walking into the grocery store in your bedroom slippers matter less.
Every day of The Holiday Break is put together on a whim. No effort is required.
Therein lies my problem.
By not following my usual patterns, I am left with almost no way of telling one day from the next. Nothing that happens during The Holiday Season happens during the course of our regular day-to-day non-Holiday lives. The days begin to blur.
Take today, for instance. Today FEELS like it’s a Sunday but it’s not. Yesterday felt like a Monday. Tomorrow, in my mind, should be a Wednesday. Since the Holidays are a free-for-all rampage of impulsive events that carry no necessary outcome, we lose our trail of breadcrumbs and find ourselves endlessly questioning, “What day is this again?”. Routines fall by the wayside and a day’s focus is more likely to be along the lines of clearing a spot on the counter for the new air-fryer. Any resemblance of organization is left in one’s in-box awaiting the invisible signal to Begin Again, at some point in January.
And when that signal sounds, you can bet that I will be the first out of the blocks waving my Hilroy note pad in one hand and a Paper Mate in the other, scrabbling together all of my hopes and dreams for the coming year and then itemizing dizzying road maps in order to build a daily and weekly routine that will support the hope that everything is possible and that this year, I will be able to Achieve. Spectacularly!
However, while I wait in my post-Holiday fog for that annual ritual to begin, I have no choice but to continue fumbling blindly along while periodically shouting to no one in particular, “Does anybody know what day this is?”
