Creatures of Habit

by Steve Gajadhar

"I think action is best when it emerges from a profound apprehension of the universe and human destiny, not from some wildly passionate impulse of romantic but disproportioned self-assertion."
--Bertrand Russell

In varying degrees, we are all in some way attuned to a schedule: work, school, television shows, and for some, biorhythms. Perhaps the need to schedule springs from modern man’s need to be productive, or perhaps it’s just natural for humans to break our lives into discreet, manageable chunks. But the ontology of habit is for another post, for this one I’m ruminating more on the genesis of the schedule and my many vain attempts to break out of old ones or into new ones.

My wife recognized it first. Routine gives me comfort. Whether consciously or not, every morning I set up an idea of my day spinning smoothly and if the unexpected jams in my spokes it literally gets me bent out of shape. I’m not sure what this says about me, but it’s probably not good, and no I don’t have OCD. Yet.

I recently started working from home. Initially, I relished the idea of the freedom from the office. No more work schedule. I could make my own hours!

Sometimes it amazes me how poorly I know myself.

My whole adult life has been dominated by work. Work and night classes. Work and partying. Work and writing. And then the regularity of this was instantly gone. Permanent vacation, sort of. I started like that, took the first month completely off. Completely idle. Some would say useless, but I have always praised idleness, the acquisition of useless knowledge, and the virtues of entire days blown in front of the Xbox 360. But how does one introduce schedule into the void? Slowly?

Or all at once?

And why do I (and most of us I think) always fall into the same default schedule that got me started on this topic? Blogging this up the night before has become my routine. And it shows. Every time I intend to start composing early, tumble some ideas around until one rises to the top, and then idle on it through a game of Madden.

Perhaps it’s willpower that I lack. This is certainly the case with my on again off again running schedule, and my promises to write more. You see, to me, schedule is hopelessly influenced by and intertwined with the shifting nature of commitment. For everything is schedule and schedule is everything. It’s only a matter of which one you buy into, which one you commit to. Think about it for an hour. Diets. AA. Marriage. Pets or kids. Everything in this life has some form of schedule hanging over it. A time, a place. And if you’re a believer in fate, even death checks his appointment book. So where does that leave those of you who, like me, are always starting something new and never finishing the old? As if I have the answers. I’m tired. All I do know is that next week I’m going to start writing my blog sooner, you can bet on it (but I wouldn’t). For now, I need to go check the door three times and rinse for 30 seconds before I go to sleep…