Being in your forties with nothing about your routine that's been in place for more than a year or two is the kind of thing that can happen to people, I say disorientedly. Nothing like the end of a marriage around the time your kids go off to college to destabilize things.
Do you find yourself reevaluating routines that weren't a priori disrupted, just because once you're shaking everything up, might as well clean out all the cobwebs?
Could you give an example or two? I feel like this is resonating a little bit but want more to grab onto.
I'm leaving a job I've held for 12 years. I'm more reluctant to do so than I should be given the fundamentals of things.
Well, there's disrupted and there's rendered unnecessary. Like, I'm working out a lot more because there's time in the day that was previously devoted to paying attention to Tim: it's easier to leave the house on a fixed schedule in the morning when breakfast isn't a period devoted to sort of checking in before the day gets started.
What's the point of getting married if you have to keep paying attention to them every single day?
And somehow keeping the apartment clean and cooking dinner have gotten much easier, which is mystifying because I swear he was doing a not unreasonable amount of domestic work. He was just, somehow, creating more chaos than he resolved?
I guess I was already fairly calcified by my early 40s. Switching jobs and moving to a new city was more disruptive to my overall equilibrium than I expected and it took me a while to get back to "normal", whatever that is.
What's the point of getting staying married if you have to keep paying attention to them every single day?
This may have been Tim's thinking.
Two examples:
- I keep tacking more things on to my morning routine, (ie MWF workout, and then add PT stretches in, and then add a walk in, and post on Unfogged while eating frozen blueberries, and and...) and it's getting incrementally longer and longer, and when I dropped it for a week when we had visitors, I missed it intensely.
- I had a friend in town, and we were returning some shit to Target, and as we parked, she said, "Why don't I go ask that person to use their cart?" which was obviously a reasonable thing to do. But I was frazzled by the idea of talking to someone to get their cart, in part because I had some of the kids with me and they were using some of my mental bandwidth (even though I wouldn't have been doing the talking! She offered to! I just never would have thought to ask someone for their cart when they were done.) So I said "No!" and a few minutes later, when we were carrying the shit inside, I said, "I bet you wish you had that cart right about now!" and she admitted yes, and I apologized. It had seemed overwhelming in the moment sheerly because it's not my habit.
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1: I'm also curious about whether you are setting up new routines while the old ones are disrupted. The last time I moved was an eye opener. When we had all the furniture out of the old house, I realized most of our room planning was based on inertia. If we had moved everything out and right back into the old house it still would have improved the living space..
Spoiler alert: in the new house we have never moved everything out and back in again. Also, most of the stuff is where it is because of inertia.
7: Wouldn't being minus 1 teenager in the house be the major factor there?
I realized most of our room planning was based on inertia
Planning your home decor based on Newton's laws seems like a good idea. If I had to consider that my couch might suddenly move, I'd be afraid to put the coffee table anywhere.
13: There was a year between when he left and she did. She's home now, and is definitely a hurricane of untidiness as well as a beloved ray of sunshine, but doesn't seem to make it more difficult to get anything done the way he did. And again, I swear he was doing a reasonable amount of cooking and cleaning!
But I'm actually the wrong person to opine about this, I just momentarily felt like talking about how pleasantly life is working out. On the actual question, I'm generally lazy and sluggish, but I don't calcify into routines easily. I've kept up consistent weightlifting for a year now and that's really long for me to do anything consistently, and there's always a risk I'm going to drop it.
Ugh, this is too depressing a topic. I'm nothing but a sequence of routines.
I like being a sequence of routines.
On the other hand, while I'm nattering on about myself, it's not exactly a routine but I'm feeling a little, not curious exactly, but aware of my geographical limitations. I'm pretty close to having an empty nest, at which point I could, possibly, sell my apartment and move anyplace in the world. On the other hand, as I may have conveyed over the years, I'm evolved to fit in a very specific ecological niche, and it involves not going anywhere the subways don't run. But I could. If I wanted to, which I probably don't. But I could.
And what Barry said about the new job. Yay for selling out!
16: Being solely in charge of cleaning can make things faster, ime. When First Lady Jane's depression was at certain levels all the housekeeping was one me and I could put things away 100% by my own system. It made for efficiencies. When her depression included a level of hoarding, things kind of went to crap. But there was an efficient era for a bit.
Congratulations, Moby!
I've been reluctant to do the same, also in the face of bad fundamentals. On the other hand, I've built up a lot of knowledge of our code base and how we do things that won't transfer, most other tech companies will be more obviously evil, and I'm afraid I'd have to work a lot harder.
I'm generally a disordered person but over the last few years I've started developing some routines. In some ways it feels like stagnation, but it's comforting that I'm finally establishing a stable base to work from.
On the other hand, as I may have conveyed over the years, I'm evolved to fit in a very specific ecological niche, and it involves not going anywhere the subways don't run.
"I have a very particular set of skills. Skills that I have acquired over a long career. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you. Unless it involves getting on a bus."
20: You have a bunch of little kids. Your routines serve a purpose.
20. Right. Part of the sadness of getting older is not having a brain that works so well. One of the compensations of aging is not needing a brain that works so well.
I had a very refined set of routines at my previous job. Dropping all of them should have been disruptive but in fact they just evaporated as if they had never been.
||
Nothing like being on leave and having to log on to ERP to finish your periodic appraisal which they said had to be finished in September but apparently now it's due on June 30th and my manager has to have time to evaluate it. At least I can watch the World Cup while I do it.
|>
||Barry, what do you think of Tony Scott?|>
Loved The Hunger and True Romance, especially the former. And what can I say, it's corny as hell but Top Gun is a classic in its own way. I don't really like much of his later work (and was pissed about the remaking of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, one of my favorite films) I guess he fell into a rut? I was saddened by his suicide. He was a decent journeyman director.
I find calcified routines really oppressive. Partly I get bored, but also I've never lived anywhere (as an adult) for more than four years. And my adulthood has been a cascade of pretty drastic changes in my physical capabilities and needs as well.
I feel fine with this. Inflexibility in other people is increasingly annoying to me. I don't care how you always do it, just like I don't care how anyone else does it! What's the best solution RIGHT NOW?
I have daily work routines that are helpful. One of the things I like about travel is it gets you out of your comfort zone breaks you out of your daily routines.
Haven't seen The Hunger or Revenge*, also disliked Pelham 123. I thought Crimson Tide a masterpiece, very nearly perfect. I'm half-rewatching Man on Fire now for maybe the fifth time, making it I guess one of my all time favorites. I can't decide if the photography is brilliant psychedelic or just bullshit. Also saddened by his death.
* Though I loved the novella; but from the net it seems Scott's version missed what I thought important.
That's especially true if your comfort zone includes not paying $14 for a stale sandwich.
I like routines! I like drinking a cup of coffee in the morning in the sunshine and reading part of an inter-war British murder mystery before bed. I just don't like having the routines supercede other practical/logistical considerations (and I stop and start routines pretty often).
33 + and
34 I also liked Crimson Tide and Man on Fire. The latter is a good example of the remake being much better than the original.
Congratulations Moby.
27 is nicely put (I am very much a creature of habit).
I don't actually have a written offer yet. I just have a very nice verbal offer and a fixed end date for my current job.
reading part of an inter-war British murder mystery before bed
I do that also. I don't know why, but I sleep better after reading, for the 15th time, about how a guy died slowly and agonizingly from bells.
To make a long story short, there's a hidden downside to bigamy.
12: We're redoing the kitchen so at the moment our main table is in the living room next to the piano, the fridge is where the table was, and my overwhelming reaction is nostalgia for my crummy old studio apartment. I'm not going to keep the fridge in the living room but it's been an interesting exercise.
Also can't decide if (SPOILERS) bringing the little girl back in the third act was a mistake or not. Realistically it's a cop-out but OTOH it lets the movie be more than just revenge porn.
Actually it's the editing as much as the photography.
47: Made the usual demand that in addition to your regular salary they pay you a dollar for every comment here, I'm assuming. I'm sure they'll agree.
If management wants to believe the second monitor is for productivity why should anyone set them straight?
Congratulations Mobes on selling out. I always like to welcome people to the dark side
I have two but I need two for what I do.
I will say dating in my 40s is substantially more efficient, for the stated reasons (Harder because of the reduction in pool size, although I've always been more interested in oddball people, so it doesn't seem so dire). I'd like to think that spotting the trait that will not work for me happens faster because of accumulated self-knowledge, but I'm probably just more dismissive.
OP: I'm very susceptible to ruts, though I tend to call them "habits", since good things don't happen until I make them an unconscious routine. At any given moment, just reading a book is my default time filler -- it's how I spent a lot of my 20s. So if I want to do something more constructive, I need to do it long enough that it's no longer a conscious choice.
Last year I was trying to get back into better shape and took up interval running and the first week was definitely the worst. Partly because I was breaking my old routine of sleeping in until it was time to prepare for work -- carving out the extra morning time. Once I'd established the expectation, it was easy to just comply with what my better self had prepped in advance--but I'd never spontaneously get up in the morning and run on a lark.
While shin aches put an end to the running plan, I've been able to leverage the resulting "get up early plan" into a strong habit of morning walks of 20-30 minutes. Part of the reinforcement this year is that I record the mileage on monthly summary pages in my journal and too many dashed lines in a row makes me feel like I'm failing.
Man on Fire is a super underrated cheesy type movie. Not cheesy like bad, but cheesy like predictable, mainstream, whatever. I can't figure out what's so good about it.
The actors fucking commit, and in committing they sell all the Christian symbolism, which otherwise could easily be cheap bullshit. And in hindsight Scott's death makes one wonder how much of him is in there too.
59 confuses me. Did you mean it say it was overrated?
I have slipped into a ton of ruts over recent years. Some of them quite productive and useful. Some really terrible.*
I find habits almost impossible to change. Well-meaning people (and idiots) sometimes offer advice of the "have you ever thought of ... " variety. It's hard to be kind, rather than responding, "Yes, in vastly more depth and with massively more consideration than you have ever mustered ...". Because the problem isn't knowing what not or what not to do. It's doing it. Which is a habit changing/motivation thing.**
* I'm not talking "heroin addiction" levels of terrible, but I need to exercise more, lose some weight, be a bit more chilled about a few things.
** and also, with long commute, small child, both parents with jobs that involve long hours, I really do struggle to find more than an hour or two each day, and some of that time has to be spent with family, or eating.
and also, with long commute, small child, both parents with jobs that involve long hours, I really do struggle to find more than an hour or two each day, and some of that time has to be spent with family, or eating.
I can't tell you how much more relaxed we all are now that Jammies got canned. Have you tried that?
63 Oh no! I missed that. Hope he finds a good new job soon.
It's been a long time coming, and things are already much better. Plus a good severance package. He's going to be a SAHD for the remainder of the summer, which is making him happy, and then evaluate whether or not he wants to find something part-time rather than fulltime. (Which I roughly feel like he ought to.)
Also, the quasi-documentary inserts lend the evil a feeling of reality which most action movies totally lack. On first watch I wondered if it was based on a true story.
It does have a strong sense of place.
So does my phone, as long as it can see the satellites.
61: No, what I meant was that it's a poorly-reviewed movie that I like, but I don't know why I like it. It's been a while, but I remember it had a visceral atmosphere to it.
This was pre-smartphone. They have these darling little Motorolas and things.
12: The last time I moved was an eye opener. When we had all the furniture out of the old house, I realized most of our room planning was based on inertia. If we had moved everything out and right back into the old house it still would have improved the living space.
Boy, do I hear you on this, as we're on the cusp of buying a house / moving (I hope). Shedding as much stuff as possible preparatory to this happening, and I gotta tell you: throwing stuff away is really good. Though a bit of a heavy lift. For god's sake, I'm finding paperwork from a decade ago. My general sense is: light it on fire, even if it involves gritting your teeth.
I've lived in this house for 12 years, had this job for 12 years, had this relationship for 13 years.
I think of myself as being a very habit-bound person, but I'm nowhere near those numbers and not likely to be any time soon. Over the past 8 years I moved in with my girlfriend, we got engaged, we bought a house, we got married, we had a kid, and I started a new job. Now that that's out of the way, the kid starts a new preschool in the fall and we hope she goes to a different one next year, we really should get serious about some home improvement projects, and Cassandane is looking for a new job and her best prospect would be a moderate change to her routine.
But I was frazzled by the idea of talking to someone to get their cart... So I said "No!"... It had seemed overwhelming in the moment sheerly because it's not my habit.
I used to have a similar reaction to unexpected social plans. I made efforts to suppress that reaction early in my relationship with Cassandane. She's not particularly pushy, I just felt it was good for me to do so. Lately I'm wondering about letting myself do that again. I have enough going on in my life and I'm not a depressed twentysomething any more, I don't need to force myself to go out if it doesn't sound like fun.
reading, for the 15th time, about how a guy died slowly and agonizingly from bells.
I love that one
74: Just finished Gaudy Night myself. One of her best.
I started re-reading them in order from the beginning a few weeks ago. I'm on the Russian-prince-secret-hemophiliac-professional-dancer one, now. And it's been long enough that I can't actually remember what happened so it is more of an actual mystery than usual.
that poor gal whose boyfriend had a wandering eye, she just can't win.
I reread the whole lot earlier this year and they just get better and better. AIMHMHB Gaudy Night is my ideal of a university. I have even read the first of the sequals written by Jill Paton Walsh and alas they're just fanfic.
In great need of light and well crafted reading right now because my mother is dementing horribly.
My condolences. It's bad enough when the dementia is tending toward amicability. I only had a brief window on the horrible kind.
77: There are dozens of stock photos on the same theme with the same models. (They're Spanish.)
It's no coincidence that in Spanish, "to read" is "leer".
Very sorry to hear that, NW. I know that experience too well.
If you're in a sci fi mood, I always find John Scalzi's stories breezy and almost annoyingly well crafted.
78: I adore Gaudy Night so much. I read one sequel that I actually liked because of the way Harriet Vane established herself as a married woman with some independence and equality in the relationship after having been rescued by Wimsey in Strong Poison. It's a continuation of his proposal "placetne magistra" and the equality in their both being Oxford graduates.
So sorry about the dementia.
As for reading, you've probably already read it, but I really liked Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford.
A few of my ruts survived retirement, but not many. Building new ones.
Good news is I am quite active and down 30+ pounds in that time (although just today had a stress-eating binge...). Bad news is that I am pretty fucking useless beyond registering voters here and there.
Because I haven't recently lost a large amount of weight, I'm stress-drinking instead of eating.
I stress-drank yesterday, so tonight calls for stress-eating. Oh, hell, why not both?
I was going to say it can't be stress drinking if I'll almost certainly have to keep it up for the rest of my life, but maybe that's not really true. I guess turning the slow-motion collapse of the republic into an excuse for permanent excessive drinking is a kind of lemons into lemonade thing.
I mean what with the tariffs and the stupid trade war someone's got to drink all that bourbon.
If our government is going the way of post-Soviet Russia our livers may as well too.
Congrats, Moby!
I've been stress-walking for about four months now, and have lost a lot of weight. The Fitbit is really working for me, which is a bit of a surprise. I guess I thought it was some gimmicky thing that I might use for a week or two, and then guiltily shove into the back of a drawer...
NW, that sounds rough. I'm so sorry.
Oh hey, this is a perfect thread for me. My husband has decided to divorce me. I'm not exactly sure why. I mean, we've always argued, or should I say he's always found reasons to get arbitrarily mad at me for absolutely no reason. But now he's suddenly decided this means we have to divorce.
So far it hasn't changed my routine at all, which is good because I love having a routine.
Does anyone have advice? I was mostly over the sadness, but then it was my birthday and I realized it was the first day of being an almost-divorced 38 year old. And that was profoundly sad.
After a day like today those Spanish stock photos are idiotically comforting to look at. I feel like I just watched a romantic comedy. They had their ups and downs, infidelities contemplated and real, never stopped fighting, but they got to go to the beach a lot! And they seem to be still together after all of it. Are they actually getting married? Unclear! Do the pictures lend themselves to any kind of coherent sequence? Not at all! And yet! There may be some context in that today is my and lk's ninth wedding anniversary, but honestly you don't even need to reach for it.
Sorry to hear the news, NW. Good luck, Moby.
96: Sorry, should have previewed, didn't mean to stomp. It's awful news of course, and I'm sorry. What I've gleaned around here is that it does slowly get better, and that usually people come to feel that being solitary and self-determining is better than being arbitrarily yelled at for no reason. This isn't really advice, I know.
Very sorry to hear that Liz. I've been there and it's no fun but it gets better and it can get even better than before. And you deserve better than having your partner inexplicably mad at you for no reason.
Sorry to hear that Liz (and NW). It does get better but not quickly, so don't worry if it doesn't feel like it's getting better. The only advice I have is to give yourself a break and be patient and do what you can to avoid shame or isolation (and not get too wrapped up in the divorce fight part of it, if you can). Reaching out here is already a positive step.
My sympathies to NW and to Liz. I wish I had any advice to offer. I hope that whatever routines you have keep you aligned in an ultimately healthy direction.
96: Oh, Liz, I'm so sorry you're hurting. Being 38 and parenting/everythinging solo this year has been pretty fantastic, though I had a dip of nasty depression a few weeks ago. Living with not being arbitrarily yelled at all the time will make you feel so much better in the long run, I promise. I'm a week or so from the official mark of three years since breakup and life has been super challenging in a lot of ways but so, so, so much better for me. What Halford says about isolation is big, and I'm bad about it still partly for calcification reasons and partly for others. Being involved in DSA and actually doing something has been fantastic for my emotional health, but the unexpected benefit of making friends has been even better. Let people care for you and care about you as you go through this. Please reach out if you need someone to talk to or bounce things off or just hear you flail and complain. I'm sorry but I'm tremendously hopeful for you too.
96: I'm so sorry that's happened to you. What Halford and Thorn say has been right for me -- while splitting up is painful and awful and takes a while to get through, it can be much better once you're through the transition. Lean on people as much as you can: I had some people who were wonderful about caring for me when I was a mess, and it helped a lot.
But look at my first couple of posts in this thread. I'm just a month or so over two years after Tim informed me that he was moving out of state to move in with his business partner, and my life is really very good now. The first year was hard, but since then I've been enjoying life a lot.
Sorry to hear about that Liz. If he doesn't move out of state, you know what his car looks like and can put a potato in the exhaust.
Anyway, I was really sad around my 38th birthday. I don't know why, but it went away.
I admit that my process for feeling better didn't involve any automotive vandalism, but, in retrospect, it should have.
So sorry NW and Liz. I had really good luck with my father's dementia, if that' s a thing that one can say. He was smart enough to understand what was happening to him, and it suppressed his innate arrogance and amplified his natural charm. It's very weird that when I think back fondly about my father, I think only about the last stages of his life.
Liz, I've got little to add to what everyone else is saying. I never really thought about it this way before, but my out-of-nowhere divorce (and my near-simultaneous dismissal from my job) taught me some of the humility that was later so beneficial for my father. That probably isn't a lesson that you need the way I did, but I came out of it a better person and, after awhile, a happier person.
Did you ask people if you were a better person after the adversity or did you ask them before the adversity what kind of person you were and then again after? Because the latter is a much better research design.
He's a pro. He commissioned 360° evaluations.
I don't even know what that means. Corporate jargon?
Oh, and here's the guy who fired me. By the time I won my job back through legal action, he had been pushed out because of his unfortunate habit of sexual harassment. The arc of the moral universe is long, and it bends randomly, but after decades of abuses, it is finally catching up with this sumbitch.
That's got to be refreshing to see. Or disheartening since clearly it didn't catch up for a long time.
Moby, you sold out! It isn't jargon now, it's best practice. Getting up to speed on it should be your first personal KPI.
I haven't official sold out yet. I just got the offer letter. And even after I sign it, it will be at least three years before I can afford a boat as good as a Trump supporter's boat.
O.K. Now I've sold out. I'm going to google KPI and 360 degree evaluations.
If you do well on that I bet you'll be able to afford the best alcohol stoves in the land.
117: Congratulations, Moby!
I used to say that I wanted to sell out, but no one was buying. But then I realized I sold out a long, long time ago. It's just that my price was so low, it didn't seem like it should count, but it does.
I have three so far. They're pretty cheap.
Congrats again, Moby. And I'm very sorry, Liz.
It turns out stress eating and stress drinking lead to stressful times at the scale. Who could've guessed.
Congrats, Moby! Three alcohol stoves! If the job doesn't work out it sounds like you're all set for moving into the woods and living off the grid.
I might try them both together tonight. We'll see if I can get to the bar.
The nice thing about going to the bar all the time is that if you do get divorced, you don't need to deal with the uncertainty of wondering why it happened.
125: I have one of those Biolite stoves for being off-grid.
I shouldn't exaggerate my mother's dementia. It is horrible to watch for anyone who knew her as she was, but most of it is an almost total short term memory loss. When she gets infections, it's another, much worse matter. She can still deal correctly with the facts in front of her, but there are so few of those ... And the physical decay is also horrible to watch. I keep remembering a photograph of her holding my son in the air, astonishingly strong and graceful, when she was I suppose about the age that I am now.
LIz, I'm sorry to hear that. But 38 is an OK age to reboot your life. And when you get out of a situation in which both of you are constantly angry, and everything that seems solid floats on an incandescent magma of compressed resentment, you'll find that life is -- eventually -- very much better.
No. The magma is good where it is. Just leave it be.
Oh shit, Liz, I missed 96 until I just noticed others comments. I'm so sorry. What a dick.
I enjoy the implication that modern Iceland has learned to enjoy volcanoes.
126: If you can, I'll drink to your new job. Or the end of the republic, depending on the mood.
Remember back in those halcyon days, when the biggest panic was over air flight in Europe being curtailed for a few days due to an unpronounceable Icelandic volcano?
133: That sounds like a good idea. I'll let you know when I know.
135 About the job or the end of the republic? Because I have some bad news about the latter.
And congrats!
Thanks everyone. I've joined a book club and I'm reaching out to my friends to plan more social activities. My ex has always hated social things because he hates all people. So I'm looking forward to having more people to talk to.
And I've been thinking about all the trips I'm going to take with my four-year old. She really loves travelling and vacations have always been miserable with a spouse that complains about everything unless he got to plan every single detail of the trip. Autonomy is a great thing.
129: I'm really sorry about your mom, NW. I think you're right about the anger. When I'm not distracted by all the sadness I'm amazed by all the free space in my brain that used to be dedicated to being angry about being yelled at and used to plan how to avoid being yelled at. I'm suddenly interested in reading books again and thinking about symbolism and such.
My ex has always hated social things because he hates all people.
I would bet that you're going to have a much, much better time without him once the shock and disruption resolves. Which does absolutely take a while! But if that was what he was like, you'll be in good shape going forward.
Hating all people makes sense, but that's no reason to avoid social things.
I just learned that British people don't say "zucchini" but instead say "courgette". This is the most shocking thing I've learned this week.
If a courgette is big enough, it transforms itself into a vegetable marrow.
I know them as baby marrows.
Because that's where it makes white blood cells.
"Baby marrow" sounds tolerably British. I just didn't expect full-French.
They're barely edible when small. I can't imagine why anybody would eat one that got large and tough.
Sorry, NW and Liz.
145: Then you'll hate mangetout.
I just learned what a "sharrow" is the other day.
Something that you find toads beneath? ("The butterfly along the road, preaches contentment to the toad.")
It's like a crosswalk, except that instead of an ignored warning not to drive into pedestrians, it's an ignored warning not to drive into cyclists.
Speaking of driving into things, this past week I saw a grown adult on an electric scooter forcing people to jump out of her way on the sidewalk. And another grown adult riding his fucking "hoverboard" down the middle of the street.
Why try to avoid death when the country is going to hell?
146: That's when you break out a spiralizer and make faux noodles out of them. (I was going to say "kidding", but that's actually what I do. They make good salad inclusions, or a good cool base for a tasty sauce.)
My wife tried that. Sshe didn't make them a second time.
Maybe she does when you're at the bar eating pokemons.
I was going to say that, but I enjoy writing "pokemons". Pokemons.
158: ACTUALLY it retains the gender-neutrality of Old English mann, also reflected in the derivation of woman/women. Prescriptivist.
I think the first half is related to "pooch".