This hood is hard, and honestly even though I make it look easy, it’s really not. The difference between adulthood and childhood (in the most ungeneralised way possible), is that there are normally adults handling your environment, so you just focus on getting to know you, your existence and the limited things that they expose you to. Adulthood, is where you are dealing with the environment, figuring yourself out and trying to continue surviving with a sense of enjoyment/gratitude towards existing (hopefully). It’s immensely overwhelming, so how can you start to try to navigate it? Through routines.
What is a routine?
I have done a post about routines and habits. Essentially a routine is a set of activities that you do repetitively and in some cases, naturally/subconsciously, in your life. Some people love to read/keep up with the news everyday, and set a time to check it. And people describe it as ‘things that they do’, or ‘it’s part of my life/personality’. But actually, it’s a routine. When you don’t do it it can sometimes throw you off your ‘rhythm’, or if something external knocks you off, and you don’t jump back on it, you feel things start to spiral.
Grounding routines
A routine is grounding, and that grounding is essential to give you the illusion that you have some control on your life. We probably don’t have that much control, but even being able to control something as small as the way your coffee tastes each day, can help with coping with adulting. Routines give that stabilising effect, and some routines can be used to boost your mood, health or relationships.
Turning up to a group class/activity, once a week, is part of a routine. You get human interaction, hopefully you are doing something you enjoy and so you keep it in your life. That grounding gives you something rejuvenating. Maybe on a not so good day, you go to the class and you feel a little better at the end of it. That little feeling is better than feeling worse if you hadn’t gone (in my opinion).
The benefit of routines
Here are small anecdotes of how having a routine, has benefitted me in adulthood:
Fallen off the wagon
I mentioned in a previous post about how I like to live in neutrality, where I am just coasting through adulthood with the occasional obstacle that doesn’t throw me off the wagon. But every once in a while, (because life is life) I get thrown a huge obstacle that throws me off. I have routines of varying energy requirements, and when something throws me off, the high energy routines are stopped. This is to conserve my energy, to achieve the bare minimum in adulthood: Eat well, Sleep well, Get paid.
This means I keep my gym routine (3 days a week as a minimum), I eat 3 meals a day (in varying nutrition) and I still turn up to my day job (which is my only salary right now). As a bare minimum, keeping this routine means I can keep myself ok, to get over the obstacle. Then as things get better, I bring back my high energy routines. This includes skin care, doing blog posts and IG posts and engage socially.
Having some structure
Having routine provides structure in my week. I am known by my friends to be quite a planner, and I can only plan because I have a routine. It’s not strict, it’s just my gym, sleep and cleaning routines. They have designated days and times, but they are also flexible. This allows time for interruptions and events that may happen. It also means, I can plan to change my routine.
For example, I clean and meal prep on Sundays. If I am away on the weekend (and won’t have time to buy ingredients for meal prep), I can do it a different day. I clean before I go and prep a simple meal for the Sunday so I can eat when I get back. Then do my Monday as normal, and then do the meal prep part on that day. I am still able to sleep, eat and exist with minimal friction, because I have a routine with structure. But the structure itself is flexible, which makes it manageable. They weren’t wrong giving us timetables in school to block out time for specific lessons.
TL;DR
- What I am saying is that routines as annoying as they are, are really beneficial.
- You do not need to plan out every minute of the day. Some minutes routinely followed, can be helpful to reduce how overwhelming life can feel.
- Routines are a bundle of actions, which are repeated in life without you exerting too much effort to do them.
- I’m not saying you won’t nail adulthood without routines, but you will feel like you have nailed adulthood on the days your routine works for you.
