Life brings you to meet many people and you start to arbitrarily and judgementally to make distinctions about what they do in life. It’s even more obvious when you consider yourself a productive person.
To give one anecdotal example, someone would work at the same time doing the same thing everyday churning out tickets. After work, they might have supper with their family and then run to their television or phone for the rest of the night. Then go to bed. Those who have a bit more pizzazz in their life might have gone to the gym as an item in their life before or after work. Assuming the matrimonial life hasn’t destroyed platonic relationships, you see your friends at the same day of the week in the same bar. Being drunk means, you talk about the same things over and over again.
My elementary, high school and university life went by very quickly. Every week, it was the same thing. Every night, it was homework and assignments. Every weekend, it was the same activities with your friends.
It gets trite really quickly and your birthdays get closer and closer. I realized that I didn’t want to live in a fleeting life that just flashed before my eyes with vague memories.
I had to kill routine.
The trickiest part was work, because that really forces yourself to follow the same schedule every week. Suddenly, my preferences made my job selection really small as flexibility wasn’t a luxury everywhere. Becoming a freelancer helped quite a bit because I held contracts with different clients doing different things every week. I attended the meetings and pulled on the due dates, but that was it. My hours were put all over of the place in both time and setting.
Other things such as hobbies can be spread out through the week in any way you want. Friends and family time become a choice based on convenience. Volunteering was outside of work hours and there various events were spread out well. I read whenever I felt like it and wrote at whatever time. Learning was no longer a forced setting, but rather according to my own pace and interests. On and on…
My organizational skills used to be based on a strict calendar. While it decided when and what I’ll do, I couldn’t account for any originality or even worse sudden interruptions. Instead, I started to decide the night before what activities I’d like to do. Then, I’d eliminate any temporal concept. Instead, anything could be done at any time as long as it was finished on time.
Things suddenly looked more colourful as they were based on whims and interests at a given moment.
I fell in love with the chaos that I lived in, and realized that I wouldn’t want to live my life in any other way. It was difficult at first because the discipline it needed. Every day was different and every day you had to adjust to your tasks.
Going back to the anecdotes, I realized that many people were only comfortable with the routine but it seemed so vapid to me. I respect people’s choices but I still feel a sense of arrogance because of my living arrangements.
My advice at this point, stop doing the same thing all the time. Explore your life a bit and enjoy discovering yourself. Sitting in front of Netflix every night isn’t going to get you anywhere. As I mentioned in previous blog posts, take that new-found time to learn and express yourself in ways that you never imagined.
Leaving routine is very difficult and sometimes soul-crushing to the point of bringing down morale. However, the journey will start slowly and eventually you will enjoy it.