It’s hard, once you stop, to start up again.
My life is set up to be intermittent. That’s not my preference, it’s just the way it is.
As much as I inherently rail against routine, I do better with consistency and, knowing this, I have tried to seek it out. Unfortunately I have not been able to collaborate with the main actors in my life to create a level of daily consistency for myself. Instead I have a reasonably predictable, undulating, biweekly cycle, during which different areas of my life flash on and off for multiple days at a time. I live in binary. All or nothing.
I’m good at all.
I’m good at nothing.
The switching…I’m not so good at that.
I waste a lot of energy trying, and regularly failing, to make the transition from one to the other. My life demands I simultaneously switch one area off, and another area on, according to its schedule. The whole point of the cycle is that all things have their place, but what if I can’t get to that place on time, because I wandered too far into the depths of the other place and I haven’t found my way out yet?
I did better when, despite my schedule conspiring against me in ways I was unable to remedy, I constructed consistency for myself. Daily consistency. A reliable thread. Anything less simply adds to the chaos, as much as I’d like to believe otherwise.
The most successful thread I constructed was writing daily. Writing meaningfully and intentionally every day. But life got noisy and I let it lapse. I let myself lapse. I dropped the thread. And that was a mistake. A mistake all too familiar.
I haven’t figured out, so far in my life, how to keep on doing anything.
The only daily consistency I’ve had in recent months is my morning coffee. Its effect is dopaminergic enough and its procurement easy enough to ensure its inclusion regardless of my week’s topography. But everything else is up for grabs, and up for debate.
And that is, quite possibly, the crux of all my problems.
Nobody except me cares, really. It’s not their problem. I couldn’t make it their problem if I tried. I did try, in some cases, so I’ve learned that lesson. There’s no point looking outward.
This is my life. How do I fit myself into it?