The dance of routine
It's a lifestyle, baby
I am counting down the days until my summer holiday. I am laying out pairs of underwear, stocking up on factor 30, and whatsapping my family about how many pairs of shoes to bring. I am desperate to get away from the cars that rev under my open window throughout the night, to close my laptop for ten days, to experience heat somewhere better suited to it than a northern European city.
The value of breaking routine and resetting is also on my mind. What better time, then, to reflect on social media’s obsession with daily routine?
They are everywhere, the perfectly choreographed videos of how alarmingly well-put-together influencers spend their day. The ascetic ‘5-9’ they squeeze in before their 9-5. They are as aspirational as they are begging for satire. I struggle to believe anyone who watches them truly believes that that is how people go about their lives.
I think (hope) we all know they are bullshit. That when you put a camera in front of anything and start filming it is no longer ‘real’. That we are not seeing them wake up, because they have had to position that camera in front of them and then re-film themselves ‘waking up’.
And yet I am fascinated by them nonetheless. The fact that many such videos rack up millions of views each points to the power they hold over many of us. Perhaps in the face of climate chaos, economic uncertainty, and the general feeling that the world is about to end (or maybe that’s just me), people are craving order as an antidote to uncertainty.
Order, fine, but at what cost? In a recent Guardian article, Sarah Manavis dismisses these videos as a sign of the rise of the ‘beigefluencer’ where young people are increasingly puritanical, conservative, and uptight. She’s right that there is something deeply depressing about these videos, but her interpretation reads like too much of a moral panic to hold much sway with me. Not only does it smack of taking all these videos too literally, but one only needs to step outside at happy hour in any busy city to see just how many people clearly do not live their lives like that.
A more interesting approach to me is to take a nuanced look at the kind of role routine can have in our daily lives. Reading Kate Zambreno’s Drifts earlier this year, one of the things that stuck out to me was her attempts to install structure into her life.
‘I begin trying to live a regimented day, an almost ascetic life […] How ritualistic, almost superstitious, I try to become – two hours in the morning of no email, no self-googling, exercise, prepare lunch, two more hours in the afternoon. Try to practice the Ayurvedic rituals I tape to my bathroom mirror. I like having my days structured for me. […] It’s exhausting to think and live with all this housework.’
Note the word ‘try’. I wonder if this is the key to the whole question of routine: where human messiness brushes against this desire for order. We can argue back and forth about cause and effect, about whether a perfectly structured routine is the symptom of someone with their life in control or someone desperately trying to impose that control, but there will always be a moment where routine has to navigate lived experience.
It’s all very well having a routine that works when things are going well, but how does it fit around a bad night’s sleep, a dental emergency, running out of coffee, or the feeling that you just can’t be bothered?
Where these perfectly structured videos go wrong is in presenting routine as being all there is to life. Routine is not life, but it can be a tool to give our daily lives the boost they sometimes need. My weekend ‘routine’ currently involves cycling to yoga, going for coffee, and then running errands. This is a rough contour that is coloured in differently each week, but the mere fact of having that structure in place helps get me out in the morning and wakes me up. The rest of my day is up to chance, or what I feel like on the day but it’s actually the subtle variations from one weekend morning to another that bring the most joy.
Every so often, this extract from Ursula K LeGuin’s writing schedule does the rounds on social media:
It’s witty, and I think people appreciate how order and chaos rub alongside one another. Everything has its time, but there is space for manoeuvre with that ‘maybe’, and the silly hours after 8 pm.
It’s an example of how a routine can leave space for the important business of living: facilitating without dictating. A dance, if you will, where the beauty comes from weaving together set patterns and unexpected variation.
Baker’s dozen
13 good things from the past few weeks
Disclaimer: the observant among you will have noticed that I inadvertently predicted Berlusconi’s death in my last Baker’s dozen. Skip over this section at your own risk.
A Sunday yoga session with pals followed by pastries in the sun at Cinquentenaire.
Spontaneous post-climbing frites.
Hosting a colleague I never get to see because she lives too far away. She came to stay as we had an event together in Brussels and we consoled each other after long days of work with bolognese, Lebanese food and romcoms.
My gorgeous gorgeous green bike has finally arrived and I have been cycling everywhere. If anyone steals it from me I will hunt them down and get them. You have been warned.
White peaches and nectarines from the market have been delicious lately. So have melons.
Making arepas with my bestie.
Making friendship bracelets like it’s still 2002. 10/10 summer activity, no notes.
I made seafood pasta, another one from the summer bucket list. I should say prawn pasta, but a solitary clam from the fishmonger made it in there too, so we’re going with seafood. It was extremely garlicky.
Finally went to get my sunglasses fixed after sitting on them almost a year ago (yes I am glamourous, yes I procrastinate, we exist) and the ridiculously nice man at the opticians around the corner refused to let me pay him but just asked me for a very cold coke zero from across the road. Humanity!
Drank life-changingly good cold brew from Jackie coffee - one of Bxl’s finest.
Ate a very good aubergine parmigiana sandwich.
Spontaneous burgers at Les Super Filles du Tram.
Made oaty white chocolate and cranberry cookies, then made an ice cream sandwich with said cookies.
Reading these always makes me smile 😊
you 🤝 me
cycling to yoga on the weekend then getting coffee and doing errands