Tomorrow morning, I’m going to have to get up extra early to get my writing done because at 9:30am I plan to run in the Beat the Blerch 10k, which is a race sponsored by The Oatmeal. I’ve only run in two other races so far, and one of them was the Blerch 10k last year, but I plan to do lots more in the future. The next one is a half marathon with my sister in Sisters, Oregon. (It just seemed appropriate.)
I’ve always liked having habits and routines like running, writing my novel, journaling, meditating, doing pushups & crunches, reading nonfiction, doing Duolingo lessons, reading poetry…
On my birthday recently I was noticing that my routine is getting so long, it’s kind of taking over all my time. I didn’t even want to do something special for my birthday because it would’ve made it difficult to get in all my routine. But I like it, they’re healthy habits, and it makes me feel safe, so what’s the problem?
I guess it might be a problem that the thought of not doing my routine makes me so very uncomfortable. Does that mean this is one of those OCD things? Are my good, healthy habits actually compulsions?!
I don’t know the answer to this, but I know that whenever there’s a questionnaire about symptoms, one of the key questions is how much a given thing is disrupting ability to live life. All the things I do are things I enjoy, and when I have to set them aside in order to take a child to an appointment or run an errand, I do. So if all I wanted to do on my birthday was work my way through a routine, that’s probably OK. Possibly weird, but whatever.
The good news about my routine is that my writing habit is the only thing that has kept me working on my book when I felt really discouraged about it. The bad news is that I only work on it 30 to 45 minutes a day because I have all these other habits to do, too, so it’s going very slowly.
But I’m more than halfway through the fourth draft, and I think when I get to the end this time, I’ll be able to edit it and send it to my publisher!