Routine

Routine: the Road to Comfort

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I have a Friday night routine. Of all my nights, Friday nights are the most sacred. They are my Sabbath. After I leave work on a Friday evening, nothing work-related happens—no emails, no grading, no lesson-planning, nothing. I need one entire night that is dedicated to not working. However, I still have a routine but it is a routine that leads me to rest.

When I get home on a Friday, there are chores to be done, such as washing the dishes, cleaning the catboxes, and making sure there is something for dinner. These are more than just chores; they are steps that help me transfer from being at work to being in my home and to have a home that I am content in. Not everything needs to be spic-and-span, necessarily, but enough has been done to ensure that major chores are dealt with. Dishes, litter-boxes, trash, recycling, etc. Sure, I have a partner who can and does help but I also find a bit of calm and reassurance in doing these chores myself. Then, once they are done, I can eat contentedly and then head up to my shower to scald and scour off the week.

Not until all of this is done can I truly feel safe(?) enough to relax. I have been productive both at work and at home and now…now I can sit. My family is cared for, the important spaces of our home are clean and tidy…now I am free. I can feel the release as I settle on the couch and Husband asks if he can get me anything. Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes the answer is no, but regardless I am now in my calm space. My routine done, the night is now mine to do with as I need and choose. Reading, writing, catching up on movies or TV shows, or just sitting in silence for a long while…whatever the night holds is utterly my choice. And that is a beautiful, necessary thing.

Starting Back at the Beginning

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In fewer than 48 hours, I return to the classroom after our two-week winter break, and whew! That letdown is hitting hard this year. I have done myself a great service in that I gave myself several days of absolute planless laziness. Hours to just read, nap, watch movies, etc. I needed that, desperately. Usually, I would be kicking and cursing myself right now for such stupidity because I would be neck-deep in grading for report cards that are due next week. However, this year, by some miracle, 95% of the grading is done already, so I thankfully do not have that particular stress currently on my soul.

That doesn’t stop me from being an anxious, sad puddle of a person right now, though. Last night, as I desperately tried to sleep after a very mentally-taxing evening, all my brain could do was think about my classroom and my first lesson next Tuesday. Then I had a random thought (yes, even more random than normal):

“Do I even remember these kids’ names?”

Vacation-related memory atrophy is absolutely a thing. At the end of the school year, my brain shuffles out most of the 150+ names that I had to memorize because it knows that in just a few short weeks, I will be shoving a whole new set of faces and accompanying names into its databanks. However, on the heels of this particular random thought came another:

“If I am struggling to remember what name goes with what face…can I really expect these teenagers to launch right back into schoolwork off the bat? Will they even remember how things work in our classroom? Have they even charged their Chromebooks once during break?”

So I am considering migrating my currently planned lesson and replacing it with a refresher course on how to “do school” after two weeks off. Maybe we could all use a day to start back at the beginning.

That can be scary sometimes, can’t it? Starting over? Starting back? Beginning again? And yet…here we are…at the beginning of another year. We are literally starting back at the beginning. So, with that in mind, why are we not willing to give ourselves the grace that comes with starting over, with being new at something?

We have never seen 2024 before; it is brand new to all of us. These days are still shrink-wrapped and shiny, and we are still wobbly on our new-year legs. It hurts my heart that we expect ourselves to barrel into this year as if we are old hat at it. We aren’t. It’s new; it’s different. Maybe we can allow ourselves to approach it the way we approach a new experience or new skill: one step at a time, with the willingness to take it slowly and learn what’s needed, and giving ourselves and others the grace to say, “It’s okay; that didn’t work so let’s go back, figure out why, and try something else.”

So maybe my coming Tuesday will be about taking it slow and re-learning how to exist in our classroom and in our school instead of throwing myself and my student heroes feet-first into the deep end of Quarter 3 (incidentally, it’s also the longest quarter of the school year). Maybe if I make the time to re-teach them what is needed, then we will be able to move more smoothly along with what is expected as the quarter proceeds. Better to set the bone correctly than to have it heal wrongly and have to re-break it and start over, if you’ll forgive the analogy.

So, as you find yourself at the beginning of this year, please do give yourself the grace of a beginning. It does not need to be perfect; it does not need to be rushed. Review and reinforce what is important for you, whether that is consistency, routine, rest, process steps, etc. Whatever you need as you begin, please give that to yourself now. Rest and re-learning go hand-in-hand. Sometimes we need to start back at the beginning in order to move forward.

Interrupting the New Routine Energy

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Have you ever noticed that when you start something new, you have all this energy for it? In dating, for example, they call that “new relationship energy”, where everything is sharp and vital and you can’t get enough of each other. Well, I totally had “new routine energy” on the first day. Over the weekend, after school closure was announced, I had sketched out a rough idea of the routine I wanted to get myself and my daughter into over this long duration at home. I talked it over with her and did my best to give myself grace for that first day–that it didn’t have to be perfect and, if it didn’t come together at all, that was okay, too. You know what? The first Monday home went beautifully! We accomplished every part of my proposed routine, with minimal snags or objections. It was an absolute dream!

Then came Tuesday. The only difference in Tuesday was a moved-up dentist appointment, but everything still went relatively well. Even now, I can still feel the novelty, the newness of the routine, of this situation, buzzing along my skin, and I think it is what is keeping my daughter relatively docile. New things, new chances, new interactions with these people with whom I spend my life. Despite this being our house, our town, our stuff, this is now our daily routine(s) writ small and contained in this space. It’s still there, that “new routine energy”, but I cannot help but think on down the road, down the days and weeks, to where the routine will become…well…routine. When it gets old and the everyday sets in. That’s when things get hard, tempers get short, the space seems too small, and the days seem oh, so long.

That is when we really need each other. When we start to follow blindly because “it’s what we do”, that’s when it is so very helpful to have that surprise phone call from a friend, your favorite song playing as their ringtone. That is when the chirp of the video-chat call on your computer or a letter in the mail is so very welcome. That is when a break in the energy is needed.

Jesus interrupted that “routine energy” on a not-so-routine basis. He ate at the homes of tax collectors and social pariahs. He held conversations with women often called harlots. He touched the untouchable. For Jesus, “this is how we have always done it” wasn’t good enough. If it didn’t center around people and love and mercy, it was not good enough. Life as it had always been done was not “routine” for Him.

May we be willing to break our routines for people, for love, for mercy. May we take that extra time at the table or on the couch to listen to the story our child made up. May we make just a little more coffee than normal so that our partner can have an extra cup as they try to figure out how Microsoft Teams works. May we be willing to do what Jesus did: break the routine energy in those moments when it is (or even just could be) so very vital.