New Life in New City #2 — Routine

It’s time for routine, this might be the hardest part of the job. It’s always been this way, maybe because it takes time for the brain to adopt, to rewire those old circuits in the brain, and so it has to go through a phase of confusion and resistance. That’s honestly what I’ve been feeling for the first week and going on two, lots of painnnnn in the brain.

The first difficulty is getting up early in the day. For the last month I’ve been traveling with a friend and there was no need to get up so early, we’d typically get up around nine or ten, but now I need to go for a run, shower, work, eat, SO MANY THINGS…

Also sleep here is difficult, because I’m not used to the place, and sometimes I'd wake up during the night, to the noise of my flatmates fucking or playing music, they tend to go out for late-night drinks and come back real late — like 3 am. I do wear earplugs, but those get pretty uncomfortable.

Another task is to make sure my days have some sort of structure to them, otherwise, I’m wasting time and doing pointless shit, like watching the Twitter feed and overeating. And having things to do ain’t so simple either, you have to find classes, events, things to do, walking around the city is good, but you eventually tire of that.

But I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. The month of March is about routine integration, and making sure that I’m being strategic about my actions. I don’t want to do things just for the sake of doing them, I actually want to learn, develop, and build a life of some sort. I’m not going anywhere for a while. The plan is to build a home-base, so that I have a permanent place to come back to, to work from, and 'just' in case of emergencies, to have that safe-heaven.

What about Chicago, well that's where my Momma lives, but to fly there it's quite expensive, and also the whole thing with the Visa, you never know if they’ll let you in 'yet another time', maybe you’ve ‘already’ been too many times. The other place to go is to Grandma’s, but Grandma is pretty strict and very religious, she cooks well, that’s one PRO, but I rather not. I got some friends around, but most of my friends are like me, homeless. Well, they travel a lot, and I can never seem to catch them.

I don't need to travel anymore--at least for now, I've done it, I've seen it, I've experienced it. Being on the road all the time can take a toll on you. Now, when I hear younger people speak about backpacking around Europe or that sort of sh*t, I cringe, because I know how it goes, I know the end result. There is an initial excitement when you've never done it before because you imagine all the adventures you'll have, all the people you'll meet, all the new sights you'll see, but at the end--once you're back home, people will listen to your stories once or twice, and then they'll stop asking. Life will go back to the way it used to be, and what will be important is not where you traveled, or the crazy sh*t you experienced, it will be what you have and what you can offer to the people around you.

But balance is important. A balance of "regular" life, and an "adventure" life. You can't have one without the other, you need a bit of consistency and also a bit of adventure. Without any adventure you can become "boring", and without any consistency, you become "useless", so don't slide too far to either side, make sure you keep that balance.