Three Kids in a Trench Coat: Routine Beauty
We built this city on...clear boundaries and set routines, actually.
On Sunday afternoons, I go swimming. When I say ‘swimming’, I mean that gentle head-above-water breaststroke that glamorous old ladies do, the kind where you could go in with a face full of make-up and it’d still be flawless by the time you got out. But yes, every Sunday I go to the Olympic Pools in Newmarket and I swim 10 lengths. Then I sit in the sauna,* and then I sit in the steam room, and then I walk back to the car and drive home, feeling like my body and soul has been scrubbed clean.
This routine started while I was training for the Queenstown Marathon.** Sunday long runs would fuck up my legs, and going for a gentle swim was one way of stretching them out and helping my body recover. After the marathon was over, though, I kept up with the Sunday afternoon swims, because I found this routine had become a cornerstone of my week. It was a ritual that helped me to draw a line under the weekend and prepare myself for the week ahead. I’d head home feeling relaxed and quietly content - a feeling I thought it was physically impossible to have on a Sunday.
This isn’t the only routine that shapes my days. On Saturday mornings, my partner and I go to a local cafe to work on our writing projects together. We have pre-work coffee dates on Friday mornings. I routinely write and publish a blog piece once a week.***
For the last few months, though, these routines have been put on hold. Yes, there was my parents’ visit, a four week stretch where normality was swapped for a hedonistic month-long joy ride.**** But I also had surgery in January, which came with a six week recovery period where my normal schedule went out of the window. Swimming? Absolutely not. Chores? You’ll barely have the energy. Running? Are you fucking kidding me.
I’ve been pretty surprised by the positive role routines are playing in my adult life. When I was younger, ‘routine’ was a dirty word. I grew up in the Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl drenched 90s and 00s, where a good life was all about living unpredictably and spontaneously, heading out on unplanned adventures, falling in love with strangers, wearing dresses over jeans. There’s a reason every teenager was so ardently describing themselves as ‘random’ during this era. A life based on routine looked like death, a predictable world drained of colour and magic. Life was all about mystery and not knowing what was coming next. The people who slaved under routines were closing themselves off from the unexpected magic of the universe. They were never the protagonists.
Sure, in stories, predictability is no fun. But in real life, it’s actually quite wonderful. What a joy to reach adulthood and discover that routines can be the foundations from which contented and creative lives can be built. Over the past year or so, routines like my writing sessions and solo swimming trips have helped me turn what was starting to feel like a chaotic and rudderless existence into something much more fulfilling. That sounds a bit dramatic, but I mean it genuinely: the impact of regularly dedicating a small amount of time to things that are important to me has, honestly, been quite dramatic. I used to want to write, but I did very little to make it happen. Attempts at writing would happen randomly, in bursts, and, being unsustained, they were pretty unsuccessful. I applied this deeply ineffective strategy to many areas of my life: I’d suddenly remember that I hadn’t done much towards a certain goal, anxiously put in a tonne of effort on one day, feel disappointed in the results, and then push it aside again for a while. A life without routine left a lot of space for anxiety and panic, and very little space for things I really wanted to nurture.
It’s not very glamorous, but I am happy with my increasingly predictable life. The routines not only bind me more strongly to the things I love to do, but they help me to feel more connected to the place I live. Home is security and comfort. They say magic only happens outside your comfort zone. Unsurprisingly, I think they’re wrong.
Me and the gals, having a Sunday.
* Usually surrounded by a crowd of a dozen men, at least two of whom will be having a very loud conversation about work. Nothing builds your meditation skills more than learning how to block out obnoxious finance bros.
** Did I mention I’d run a marathon? Two actually. No, no, please, hold your applause.
*** You don’t need to fact check that too closely.
****No one knows how to party quite like mortgage-free Boomers.