Recently, I started getting up at seven a.m. I dress, head downstairs, make porridge or a sandwich for breakfast and wait for the coffee to brew. I play Wordle* and try not to open Instagram or the Guardian news app (often failing). Next, I go to my desk. I write my morning pages, then lift open my laptop and see what the day has in store.
There’s no real reason for me to get up at that particular time; no one is dependent on me in the mornings, and I have no full-time job to sit down to. But, recently, I’ve been feeling like my life lacks a solid shape. Various compartments compete against each other for my time and attention, and, more often than not, I want to sack it all off and play Sims all day. The abandoning of all self-restraint in favour of hours spent doing nothing ‘productive’ looms ever-present in the back of my mind. And so, I set my alarm.
I have always loved and craved routine. Most humans do, to a certain extent – and being of the change-hating, anxious variety makes it that much more central to my mental wellbeing. In the not-so-distant past, I had my morning routine down to a fine art. I woke at six a.m., showered, did my makeup, got dressed, styled my hair and made my way to the bus stop to start my journey to the office at just after seven. I took a homemade coffee with me for the road, and ate breakfast at my desk (goodbye healthy digestive system). It felt like I was running on autopilot, in a good way; every aspect of the morning fit perfectly into its slot. Looking back, I can see how unwavering adherence to a set number of tasks prepared me for a day of unrelenting chaos over which I had no control.
Take away the confines of my 9 to 5, and apparently the glue that holds together any semblance of a working routine disintegrates pretty quickly. Thinking back to those mornings of regimented routine, though, I wonder: did hyper-organisation make me happier and calmer, or did it just pander to my anxiety that, without a strict routine, the whole day would fall apart? It’s this same question that hangs over my mornings today. Am I happier when I’m up by a post-snooze half seven a.m. than I am when I let my body decide the hour it feels ready to wake? Do the things I want or need to do – currently, a competing circus of writing, Swedish studies, client work, learning to drive, garden tasks and household chores – still get done if I miss that vital, worm-catching window of time?
*
The garden is full of routines – organisms acting on an instinctive level to do what needs to be done. With smooth predictability, buds form and burst; leaves uncurl; birds return to nest; temperatures rise; winds carry seeds and leaves to their next destination. It’s easy to look out of one’s window and project choice and enjoyment onto the landscape. But the rhythms of nature are not comparable with what time I might decide to drag myself out of bed, or the mild horror I might experience upon realising I’ve forgotten to play Wordle. We’re talking life and death, here. These are the routines of survival.
*
Something I’ve tried very hard to construct a routine around is writing. So many good intentions have crested high waves before crashing against the hard shore of life. Get up and don’t engage with a single other thing before you’ve sat down to start writing! Write every weekday morning until lunch, non-negotiably! Work towards deadlines, self-imposed and external; write retrospectively-unattainable-number-of-short-stories this year! Occasionally, I’m possessed by the unhinged desire to emulate the routines of famous writers. I could get up at 4am like Haruki Murakami, or schedule hours of daily reading (and time to be ‘very silly’) a la Ursula K. Le Guin. These flights of fancy never stick though, and soon I’m back where I started, stuck desperately wanting more structure while being seemingly unable to create it.
*
When routine crumbles – during, for example, holidays or periods of ill-health – my anxiety tends to surge. But what actually happens is that my life doesn’t completely collapse. Instead, I build new routines in the liminal spaces left behind by the absence of daily, predictable life. I arrange my things on the bedside table of the hotel room or the Airbnb. Local restaurants or cafes become old favourites, if only for the duration of the stay. If you walk them enough, the streets of unfamiliar places become known to you in a way you might remember forever. Recently, recovering from surgery, the nothingness of every day became a routine in itself. Then: the morning smoothies I made for myself with unwavering diligence; the nightly sting of blood-thinning injections; the comfortable corners S set up for me on the sofa and in the guest room, the objects that hold my life together never far from my reach. When routine crumbles, new routines – new homes – collect in the dust left behind.
*
Recently, I stopped setting an alarm. May is the lightest month of the year; the sky dips into twilight for a couple of hours in the deepest of night, never letting us sleep in for very long. The pillars of any good morning remain – coffee, Wordle, morning pages – but I let them come to me when they come. Routines, I’m learning, can be slow. They can change, but they always take us with them.
*I know it’s very 2020, lockdown vibes of me to still be into Wordle. But the heart wants what the heart wants.
My short story collection, Tools For Surviving A Storm, is out now.
‘In a transporting, original collection, Nadia Henderson examines the lines between nature and the human world through stories set in landscapes both brutal and beautiful.’
I’m Nadia, a London-born writer living and working in rural Sweden. I write short stories, creative non-fiction and, of course, newsletters. If you like, you can find out more about me and my work on my website. Thank you for reading Home Comforts!
Man, I relate to this. The observation of nature is so apt. The difference it brings to mind is those birds, ants and flowers all follow a routine that naturally springs from their existence. They don't create a routine or plan, they simply live their existence. It's this very concept our brains have a hard time accepting, because we are so painfully aware of consequences. We so desperately and deeply feel we need to exist so we force things, instead of just being, and realizing that is okay.
This was soft and caring and vulnerable, thank you so much for sharing, it echoes!