Relative Something

So, this is what it is like to get back to the old routine, except that it is actually the new routine, since we are now in a new calendar year. I can’t help but notice that it isn’t any different than the routine from before. For all the difficulty I have with maintaining a focus on the present moment, it would actually be fair to describe me as one who gives rather limited attention to the future and as only sporadically dwelling in the past. Today’s routine is pretty much just what I bother myself with tending to.

It is becoming apparent to me that I find routine to be a comfortable thing. I like to claim being flexible and willing to adapt to change, but I do prefer to put things in a particular order and behave in a way that supports and maintains that order, even if it is a loose definition of order. Lately… say, the last couple years, it seems, I have fallen into a pattern of keeping a large majority of my laundry on the floor in front of Cyndie’s vanity set in our bedroom. Clean clothes, folded and piled, get set there and my not-yet-dirty pants and shirts, recently worn, get draped over the top. I dig through the piles during the week until it is a random mixture of once folded clean clothes and my more preferred and frequently worn, but not yet dirty, shirts and pants. It is a routine that serves my process better than having things get put away. Sure, it looks better put away, but it just never seems to last very long.

That is my version of order, I guess.

My penchant for routine stood out to me yesterday afternoon when Cyndie got home from an errand, having used my car, and reported that she had filled the gas tank. She wanted to tell me because she knew I keep track of the details, saving receipts and logging mileage and she hadn’t done that. I stepped out to the garage right away, because if I didn’t, I was sure I’d forget, primarily, to reset the trip odometer that I use to track fuel progress along with the gauge. But in so doing, I felt a twinge of my being a bit obsessive in my establishment of routine. Partly because Cyndie knew enough about me to feel impelled to need to tell me about it and partly because I write down my mileage each time I fill the tank, yet I have never used that information. I am tempted to just quit doing so, just for the change of routine it would be.

I used to be pretty compelled to go through the exercise of balancing my checkbook and verifying my account every month when my bank statement arrived in the mail. I got knocked out of that habit, for better or worse, when my briefcase, containing both wallet and checkbook, was stolen from my car. All sorts of my routines were disrupted at the time and this is one that for some reason, I ended up never choosing to bring back. Now I randomly review the account online and when the statement is delivered, I don’t even look at it before filing it in a drawer. Maybe that’s an example of living in the moment for me.

I don’t know what the point of all that is, but certainly this rollover of the calendar year, that I rant doesn’t hold any more significance than any other day for taking stock in ourselves, has got me doing so anyway. Go figure. Maybe some of you will find it relative to your own routines today.

Happy first Monday of 2010!