On A Routine for Survival
when the old guard of the day must change
For your listening pleasure…
Once More with Feelings is an in-the-moment experimentation in writing celebrating second, third, and fourth chances in a world that is endlessly unforgiving. From general musings to deep dives on the emotional heartbeat that makes us us, Once More* is for you, lovers. And your readership means more than you can imagine. Let’s Try Again, yeah?
Loves and lovers,
The last ten days of my life have looked exactly the same.
A framework of each second has been carved out for my stability. I am woken up at the same time. I take my meds on a strict schedule. For the first time in several months, I am presented with three meals a day plus two snacks to tide me over in between. My free time is metered out with precision to allow for just the right amount of reflection and play. I sit and take inventory of my feelings, aligning my emotions to an impossible scale of one to ten.
I am at the epicenter of self-care and healing.
What does someone do in an environment like this?
Well, this person creates tasks out of thin air and sandwiches email check-ins into every spare moment. This person finds themselves running up the stairs to exchange self help book for Bible for laptop for iPad.
A revolving door of distraction I have manufactured in this famine of work and responsibility.
I clip my Walkman to my hip as I listen to Frank Ocean on cassette. Pacing the facility I tell myself that I am “getting in my steps”, but I am really walking away from the facts of heavy conversations from hours past.
During my time here, the power has gone out three times. Let me tell you. Being thrust into literal darkness while wrestling with inner turmoil is something else.
With each planned outage, I am subject to a level of reflection to which I am unaccustomed. The aim is to protect the fire prone land from the effects of wind meeting power line.
This is a good thing.
The silence is not.
Thoughts rifle through me. I am pulled out of my surroundings.
How did I end up here? Am I cut out for this? Do I deserve this gift? Am I strong enough for this? Have I made a grave mistake?
Have a made a grave mistake?
Only to pause and ask a final time, Have I made a grave mistake?
The landscape of my mind disappears into the background. I am trapped in a black box of time. A plane of existence that supersedes the present and projects an unreality comes to the foreground. An unreality wearing the mask of truth. An unreality that collapses into itself as the world comes briefly back into focus only to swallow me once more.
Later, at the whisper of my name, I am brought back to life. My exit from this torment arrives in the form of schedule and obligation.
How can you lament your position in the world when you have yoga in five minutes? How can you spin out about your self-worth when the chef has made berry apple crumble for dessert? How can you lean into your despair in a room of full of inquiries with two bodies, one of which is your own?
How can unreality compete with reality when someone is knocking at your door to remind you of the next meeting, the next activity, the next step in the routine?
Before I was forced to take leave from work to attend to my health, I had a different type of routine.
6:00 AM alarms snoozed at 9 minutes increments until the guilt of not being awake caused me to sit upright and get to the action of the day.
Showers hovering just above scalding designed to remind myself that I was still alive. Quick departures to a coworking club where I was often the earliest soul in the room. The lights snapping on in sections of the building as I entered with the first steps of the morning.
ADHD meds chased with flat whites. All before 7:00 AM. All before settling into a 10 hour day, followed by a five hour night. All to arrive at home just past midnight. To then crawl into bed to awake again to another 6:00 AM start.
As I sit at my favorite spot in the facility – peering through a window facing the hills that form the border for Los Angeles and Ventura counties – I notice the small shifts that have taken place since I have been here.
Despite my best efforts, I am failing to maintain my old routines.
There are no Slack messages. No Google Meet calls. No drives to malls to work a second shift. No weekend pursuits of third, fourth, or fifth jobs.
I am being cemented into a different way of living.
The slow pace of this place is inviting me to match its stride. And, though I resist it, I find myself clinging to this new routine. A routine of survival.
I am sure if I were to ask the staff here they would say all of this is by design. I imagine the purpose is to compel me to take note of what is required to sustain a life that punches above struggle.
The goal here is more than that of healing, but of adjustment. An investment like this requires you to take stock of your shortcomings in personal care. It requires you to admit to yourself that you haven’t been well because you haven’t allowed yourself to be. It requires you to ponder the ways things were and accept that they will no longer work.
It requires you prompt yourself to engage with a new question, What do I need for my wellbeing?
It forces you to put yourself at the center of your own survival.
I haven’t figured out everything that needs to shift to endure the time I am in, the times we are in. I do not know what shape my life will take in the coming weeks. I do know my body’s new routine signals that the old will no longer do.
My routine, our routines, must be ground in survival.
It is the only way we will be able to do the work that is set forth before us.
A routine that prioritizes flow instead of staccato turns.
A routine that puts rest at the beginning and the end.
A routine that gives way to purpose, breaking the tradition of tasks over fulfillment.
A routine that puts community on a pedestal, making it a non-negotiable.
A routine that signals that we are prepared to do more than just survive.
A routine where survival is only the beginning.
A routine that names ourselves first.
The next four years and beyond call for a new type of determination.
Let’s uproot the steps of the day that no longer serve us and plant roots in the new ground of tomorrow knowing we can always try again.
This is not a journey of requirements and prescriptions, but one where we take the time to be in the standstill of the sun or the rain when they come.
— E
This note’s song has nothing to do with the post. I hope that’s okay. I just really love UK rap and this was my soundtrack for writing this piece. Plus, who doesn’t need a nice bop from time to time? A tune from the UK’s most successful artist:
proud of you <3 as my therapist so wisely said to me on my leave, "rest is productive".