Back into the swing of things

     When I was a teenager, I remember looking at the world and being offended at how most adults were such creatures of habit. Day in and day out, they had their routine and stuck to it, rarely changing anything or looking around at the amazing world around them (at least, from my perspective, that was the case). It looked like such a dreary, boring, grey life, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

Monday (that's me in the middle, watching)

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

     I swore I would never lose my sense of wonder and inquisitiveness, and never be burdened down into a routine. Fast forward a dozen years or so, and let's see... I think it's safe to say that I've kept that awe and curiosity: my morning drives are usually spent looking at the sky, the mountains, and the flowers on the side of the road rather than staring at the grey asphalt, and I do my best to find something to laugh about or investigate on a regular basis. And you know, since I'm told pretty regularly that I look younger than I am, I'm gonna go with that being a good thing. So far so good, I'm sticking to my vows.

     But this routine thing... that's a little more complex now. When I was younger, I would finish my homework in an hour or two, when I cared to do it at all, and then the world was mine for the taking. I could bike, walk, hit up a playground, drive around with friends, play card games, dress up and go somewhere, go swimming, go window shopping, wash cars (which was still fun to do at the time), set up a puzzle, go hiking, bake something fun, draw, listen to music and dream, see how far I could make it on a pogo stick around the neighborhood, practice the piano, fiddle around with my violin (ha!), try out the machines at the gym, practice fencing, or bother my sisters. Moreover, if a sister was free, we could play in the hammock, explore the woods behind the house, play ping-pong while wearing roller skates, play board games, narrate a disney movie with the volume turned off, joust with the unicycle and wheelchair in the garage, have an impromptu tea party where you had to eat skittles with a fork, build vehicles with legos to carry our weekly candy stash, or just chase each other around with peanut butter on our hands. (Good lord, I've led an awesome life....)

     When you're an adult though, a good portion of your day is eaten up by work or classes, commuting, preparing your own meals, cleaning up after yourself, and good luck if you have to take care of other people. Suddenly, spontaneity takes on a different face. Even more so when you live alone, and most of your friends are either a couple hundred miles away or happily married and busy working to repopulate the world. Don't get me wrong, I still have the option to cook, bake, sew, knit, watch movies, play video games, draw, and read anything I can get my hands on, but realistically, when you look at an adult's life, there's just not that much time to run off and be weird. Especially when you like keeping a neat house, and you know you'll have to clean up after said weirdness...

     So, a routine forms. There's so much to keep track of, with bills, responsibilities, and whatnot, that the only way to keep track of it all is to have a basic structure to your life. You learn to recognize the free spaces in the structure and fill them with flights of fancy and silliness, but from the outside (and non-adult, worry- and responsibility-free observer), it still looks like a routine. And when you finally get that break, take a vacation and run rampant all over your carefully-constructed schedule, man, it is hard to get back into the swing of things. But you know, I'm okay with my routine. It's not as colorful as my childhood was, but it's not nearly as grey and downtrodden as it could be. Cheers!