After publishing yesterday’s post, I went back to bed.
I was in a bad, bad mood. I didn’t really sleep, but I did slumber.
I also ended up talking on the phone. A lot. A trio of calls, spaced throughout the day, with lots of text conversations in between, helped me get my head back in the game. Kinda. Sorta. Mostly.
As I talked and texted with some of my favorite people, I realized that over the past year, I’ve abandoned many of the rituals and routines that helped me navigate three-plus years of agoraphobia and gave me the strength, stability, and structure to start COLLIDE PRESS.
Instead, I’ve been organizing my days around two very simple questions:
How do I feel?
What do I want to do?
At first, it felt liberating. No rigid schedules. No arbitrary rules. No feeling like I had to do something simply because Past Clint decided Present Clint should.
For the record, I hate shoulds and should-ers.
I would listen to my body. Honor my feelings. Go with the flow.
And there’s a lot to like about that method to my madness. It gives me flexibility. It leaves room for spontaneous plans, unexpected calls, social encounters, creative impulses, naps, adventures, and the occasional afternoon when the obvious answer is, “Fuck it. Let’s go do something fun.”
But there’s a downside.
When I schedule my life entirely around how I feel, I give my moods an awful lot of authority. And my moods are not qualified to be in management. Neither is my anxiety. Nor my pro-level avoidance.
And my inner procrastinator? That bitch has been embezzling time for years.
Give any of my emotions and feelings the opportunity to make every decision and suddenly it’s midnight. The dishes are still in the sink. I haven’t answered an email. And somehow I’ve fallen down another completely irrelevant Wikipedia rabbit hole.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized I may have forgotten why rituals and routines are actually useful.
For me, they help me give the day some shape. They’re guardrails. They keep me from driving my life into a ditch every time I wake up on the wrong side of the bed.
Because there’s a difference between flexibility and drift.
Flexibility says, “I can change the plan.” Drift says, “What plan?”
When I do something often and regularly enough, I don’t have to negotiate with myself about it every time. I just do it.
And apparently, I need that.
Rituals and routines eliminate some of my mental gymnastics. They give the day a starting point. They create transitions. They tell my brain, “This is what happens next.”
That doesn’t mean I want to turn my life into a military operation.
I don’t want to schedule bathroom breaks in 15-minute increments. I don’t need an app congratulating me because I successfully drank water. And I absolutely do not want some productivity guru telling me how to optimize my morning.
I like spontaneity. I like flexibility. I like unexpected invitations, long conversations, wandering around museums, and sitting down to make something only to look up three hours later and wonder where the hell the afternoon went.
I want all of that.
But I also need some structure underneath it.
Once the basic life stuff is handled, there’s plenty of room for the fun stuff. The spontaneous stuff. The “let’s see where the day takes us” stuff. The stuff that makes life feel like life instead of a particularly elaborate spreadsheet.
Maybe that’s the part I’ve been missing.
I’ve spent too much time believing that getting back on track requires some dramatic course correction. A grand reset. A new system. A better version of myself.
But I know from experience that it usually doesn’t.
More often, getting back on track means doing the next small, obvious thing. Even when I don’t feel like doing it. Especially when I don’t feel like doing it. Do it anyway. And then do it again tomorrow. And the day after that.
Not because I’ve suddenly become disciplined. Not because I’ve figured out how to optimize my life. Not because I’ve finally found the perfect routine.
Just because I kept putting one foot in front of the other.
And eventually, almost imperceptibly, the dishes get done, the emails get answered, the videos get made, and I’m able to step outside with my head held high.
And somewhere along the way, I realize I’m not stuck anymore. I’m moving.
Maybe getting back on track isn’t about finding a new direction at all.
Maybe it’s simply remembering how to take the next step.
Keep calm and get your routine on!
Clint 🌈✌️
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BORN THIS WAY ON THIS DAY
08-09 = Amanda Bearse (1958- ) = American actor, comedian, and director 🌈
08-09 = Dan Levy (1983- ) = Canadian actor and comedian 🌈
08-09 = Eileen Gray (1878-1976) = Irish architect and furniture designer 🌈
08-09 = Justice Smith (1995- ) = American actor 🌈
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MAN CRUSH OF THE DAY
“In my head, I’m a purist that doesn’t require anything but a group of good friends and a bottle of wine. In reality, I’m co-dependent on my iPhone and fully conscious of the fact that my attention span is corroding.”
Dan Levy