A view of the neighborhood pool from my vantage point, my colorful skirt and black sandals in the foreground
By the side of the pool while the kids had swim lessons. If we got there ten minutes early and it took five minutes to slather on the sunscreen and five to stake out a spot in the shade and fire up the lap top I could usually get 40 minutes of writing in a go. 40 minutes a day, for two weeks straight, Monday through Friday.
In the lobby of the rec center, both before it was refurnished and it had a sickly green glow and after when it had attractive splashes of green on the walls. The boys are learning how to play chess once a week in the deepest darkest parts of winter.
At a local Buona Beef where I holed up in the covered patio section that is too cold in winter and not as well-ventilated in summer and so fewer people mind if I take up a table for an hour. I try not to drip ketchup on my notes or phone or laptop but keep eating fries as I type, licking salt off my fingers as I pause to think.
At soccer practice where I can only take my laptop out on days that are so overcast there isn’t a glare on the screen but it also isn’t so cold that I need gloves. There are no trees for shade, just an open windswept field.
In the school parking lot. I would on the coldest days or the rainiest get to the lot before it was closed to busses, a half-hour to forty-five minutes early. I would push the front seat all the way back, put a sweatshirt on my lap to raise the computer up and type until the last bell was three minutes away, hit save quickly and rest it on the passenger side seat.
At the pond, while the boys fished with Greg and I found a shady spot. The grass tickled my bare legs and I would stop only when an ant traipsed across my thigh, or a neighbor passed by or a bluegill was caught.
In the hallway at basketball practice where my youngest and I would escape the squeak and frenetic pace of the team doing passes and jump shots and layups. We would make a nest of coats to support our backs.
In the backyard when I needed to keep an eye on water fights.
On the couch with one eye on the TV as the boys shared their favorite Wild Kratts episodes with me.
In bed, a feverish kid napping next to me, reaching out a hand every so often in his sleep to reassure himself that I hadn’t gone anywhere.
At the doctor’s waiting room, a fifteen minute stretch ahead of an appointment.
In the notes app of my phone in the sauna at the gym.
At a baker’s rack converted into a desk set in the corner of our living room.
At a card table next to our Christmas tree.
On the other side of the tempered glass between the gymnastics equipment and the rows of chairs where the parents could watch. One class, instead of writing I had a conversation about writing. A ninety-year-old great grandmother who was visiting with family for a day asked if I was a writer, because she was too. Her attention fell away from her preschool-aged great granddaughter and to me as she glowingly told me about her career as a journalist and later a producer. And how she had never received a single rejection, not once, not ever, until this very year.
At a library table on the quiet floor, situated between architecture books and books written in Japanese.
At my own desk, in my own home office, during school hours.
In a notebook, sitting on the curb in a park, a stroller with a napping newborn to my left and a preschooler playing hide and seek with his uncle in the playground to my right.
At my own desk, in my own home office, during summer vacation. The boys are old enough to occupy themselves happily for at least an hour, probably more. But the youngest does come up to announce that he can’t find the remote control truck’s remote control, but not to worry myself because it isn’t that important he just wanted to let me know.
A lot of my life I haven’t known if feelings I feel, or thoughts I have, are common. I’ll ask myself, “Do other people get as upset about X, Y, or Z as I do?” or “Did no one else like this thing I liked?” or “Did anyone else see what I just saw?” So I am going to throw this question I had of myself this morning out to the world…
Do other people have a love-hate relationship with routine, or is it just me?
Depending on what stage of life you met me, you probably would have met someone who looks like she is laid back, a go-with-the-flow sort of character who appreciates almost everything and will gladly breeze along through life letting other people, or the needs and whims of the day, set the agenda. This version of me seems easy-going and often I can enter into the flow of what is happening around me like entering a gentle stream, letting myself be carried peacefully here or there.
And the rest of the time I am decidedly NOT nearly as amendable. I’ve yelled at my husband because he hasn’t given me his proposed agenda for the weekend. I have stuck stringently to toddlers’ nap and bedtime schedules for fear they would detonate. When medical issues are involved I arrive to appointments early, plan out every bite, make five year (ok five month) plans for exercise in excruciating detail. I once decided I would be the sort of person who kept her kitchen spotless and for a few days I became a compulsive monster-and I don’t use either the word compulsive or monster lightly. It was as if a switch was flipped and I suddenly absolutely COULD NOT handle having my life controlled by someone flighty and easy-going, like the idea of order and routine was suddenly EVERYTHING. I would think that perhaps this is my reaction to stress, that making order out of chaos is a somewhat natural reaction. Except that the version of me who is a slave to routine is decidedly more stressed out on a continuous basis than the relaxed version of myself.
I’ve been thinking about this dichotomy in myself for a while now, every time I feel ashamed that I’ve lost a paper a kid needed for school I vow to do better. Every time I set up a new routine that I have trouble violating I feel ashamed that I have lost my ability to be flexible. It isn’t that I’m fastidious with work but loosey goosey with the kids, or that I’m lax with housework but strict with homework-it isn’t broken down by category consistently that way. The arenas of life I am strict about are, ironically, quite variable. Sometimes I could double as a flower child following Phish, and sometimes I am Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory insistent that we eat pancakes only on Tuesday and that I have a spot.
Right now, I have a spot.
Image Description: a laptop open on a table at a library, shelves of books on either side.
I’ve been coming to our library every day after I drop the boys off at school to write. I go to the downstairs bathroom. I come upstairs and stake out my spot, which sits between the books about the Hoover Dam on my left and a Japanese-language version of The Hunger Games on my right. I will stay up until any time before 11:00 AM, but never past 11:00 AM then leave for lunch. I had only done this for four workdays before it became a necessity.
I tried to mix it up.
My illnesses are quite variable, and with a recent heatwave my blood sugar has been dipping too often. This morning I stopped at Panera to get an egg white sandwich before writing (protein is good for keeping blood sugar steady, unlike the candy I would rather be chugging). I brought my laptop in with me, thinking that I could get to work there for a change of pace. I ate and sat and opened up Facebook and Twitter and all my social media and could not get myself to open that damn laptop. After ten minutes I gave up, and left for “the office” cursing myself for wasting time because now I would be late for “work”.
I literally could not violate my new routine without it causing me psychological distress. And it is distressing. Once I latch onto a compulsion or a way of doing things and have to change it, it is absolutely distressing. I am pissed that my oldest has two clubs that, for completely understandable reasons, have different dates than what I already wrote down in my planner. I do not like it that when my husband drives our car he parks in a different area of the parking lot than I would have. I feel strange not seeing a trailer or reading an article for a movie before I go see it. Sometimes I can be very rigid.
But, I also adored my high school students when they would come up with an unusual idea I had never thought of in class. I love when strangers sing unexpectedly in public. I love new restaurants and dishes and seeing where a conversation might meander. Sometimes I can be very flexible.
I wonder if my feelings about routines stem from the idea that I may not be neurotypical. Last April, I began to realize I might be on the Autism Spectrum. I “came out” to friends on Facebook this way-
“I’m running high on some post-workout endorphins, so I’m going to post this right now before I chicken out. My vague-post from last week, where I was happy? I finally realized/accepted something about myself and I felt immediately less alone and a lot freer.
I am not neurotypical.
I never have been.
In fact, the more I read and understand, I am pretty sure I am on the autism spectrum, possibly with Aspergers.
While working on an essay, I remembered just how much over my life I closely studied human behavior and behavioral patterns and mimicked what I figured out was “normal” for other people. From a very young age, I studied everyone and everything and hid.
Places where I felt comfortable, I let myself be “weird” and sometimes it worked out okay, sometimes it didn’t.
(And … I just started listing everything I just figured out about myself. You don’t need to know all that, so I just deleted it.)
Anyhow. I feel good.
I feel new respect for myself, realizing how tough I had to be. I was in the deep end of a pool, treading water for years, not knowing that a lot of other people looked calm on the surface because their feet actually reached the bottom.
I feel relief from the pressure to hide the weird parts of myself so often. Or trying too hard to push myself to actually *not* be weird. It’s never going to happen. I will always be weird. There won’t be a magic time when I suddenly won’t be different. I’ll still work on being socially appropriate, better at relationships, etc. But I recognize that for me it takes more work.
I feel less alone. The more I read the more I see myself in the narratives of other adult women who are not neurotypical. There are people out there that know what this feels like.
I have a new batch of coping skills for the parts of life that are hard. I struggle with things like anxiety, procedural compulsions, intense sudden special interests, inattention to things that don’t interest me, some rigidity, meltdowns and the inability to not notice a million details-that other people have found workarounds for.
So yeah. That’s what’s up.
And I feel a lot more free than I have in a long time.
For a lot of autistic people, routine is vitally important. But rigidity in sticking to a routine when it inconveniences other people very much goes against what it means to be a woman in terms of agreeableness. Knowing that I would be expected to either violate my routines or let them be violated, or be thought of as unfriendly and unhelpful, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I wonder if I studiously cultivated a life that was almost free from routine so I wouldn’t feel the distress of violating it, and would not feel the distress of violating what it means to be “feminine”. I think that perhaps I took enormous effort and discipline to be agreeable and easy when my mind wanted me to be rigid and uncompromising. Which is fairly counter-intuitive.
Routines, and the way I handle them, can feel like ensnarement. But, they can also be useful tools. Maybe, if I am aware of my tendency to get rigid with routines, I can harness some routines without them taking over my life and causing me distress. I’m not sure I can, and past evidence hasn’t given me the idea that it is something that comes easily to me. I want to be responsible and orderly when it helps me and my family, but still be loose and open to change when that is needed. I don’t want to ignore the part of me that thrives in routines anymore, but I don’t want to lose the person I am when I am able to let it go.
Maybe I need the framework to be orderly, but what I do within it to be open. Like right now-I am writing in my spot and I am rushing to finish this blog post as it is 10:51 and I have to be done by 11:00. But…I was supposed to be working on my book when the compulsion to sort this out became stronger than my compulsion to finish the chapter. So some routine, but freedom within the routine.
Like this blog. I had, in the past, expectations for myself that I would post something each week, or every other week, but the content was completely open to my whims and compulsions. Structure and fluidity.
I guess my take away question, as it is now 11:00…
Image Description: A closed laptop on a library table, bookshelves on either side. A clock in the distance reads 10:55
Anyone elsehave the same kind of love-hate relationship with routine?
Kristin DeMarco Wagner 