Like many, my “year” revolves more around the academic calendar than the yearly calendar. The end of August/beginning of September is my January. Every April, as the school year’s end finally seems within reach, I begin making grand plans for all that I will do during my summer break when I have lots of " free time.” I must admit that during the final stretch of the school year, I tend to focus on the negatives of my rigid schedule from September to May, constantly repeating mantras like, “I’ll be glad when summer gets here and I finally have time for fill in the blank.” or “If I didn’t have to do this right now I could,” again, “fill in the blank.” I make lists of all of the things that I want and need to do during those few summer months. Perhaps this is all only a silly game that I play with myself, a kind of defense mechanism, a way to get myself sanely to that moment when all of my grades are submitted and academic obligations met, that moment when I can say with confidence, “I am done!” Then what? What really happens during June, July, and August?
I must start by saying that I had a good summer. As soon as school ended in May, I had several weeks at home. Those were the weeks where I was going to clean out drawers and closets. Those were the weeks where I was going to sew on missing buttons and mend split seams. Those were the weeks when I was going to try all of those recipes that I have clipped and pinned over that last nine months. In my defense, I did some of those things, but not nearly as many as I thought I would.
I was also going to read, for pleasure. I was going to knit. I was going to take more pictures and study and practice to improve my photography. I was going to write more. I love writing and it is one of those things with which school really does interfere. (Lesson plans and lecture notes don’t count as writing!) These are the things that I never did. Yet, these were the things with which I filled in those above blanks. Why didn't I do them?
During July we travelled…a lot. First a week in Pittsburgh for a conference and then two weeks in England on a choir tour. It was all good. It’s not every week that I get to sing Evensong every night of the week in a beautiful cathedral dating from the 12th century. I must have spent June recovering from May and preparing for July. We returned home on August 1 and all of the sudden it was time to start planning for the 2016-2017 academic year. The twenty-four hour days that come at the beginning of August as the first day of school approaches seem to pass twice as quickly as the twenty-four hour days at the beginning of May as the semester is coming to an end. And now, here it is, the final week of August and I am back in school. I should be looking ahead to all that this school year will bring, but I find myself looking backwards and asking myself why I didn’t do all of the things that I “really wanted to do” over the summer. This morning as I was writing my morning pages, the answer to that question became crystal clear.
Let’s start with the morning pages themselves. (If you are not familiar with Morning Pages, they are a discipline of free writing for 30 minutes first thing every morning presented by Julia Cameron in her book, The Artist’s Way.) I have written morning pages for many years. It is in these pages where true self is revealed…all of me…the good the bad and the ugly and the beautiful. I did not write regularly over the summer. It was hit and miss and mostly miss. I'm not sure how I managed to write nearly every day during the school year, even the days where I taught 7:30 am classes, but didn't manage to maintain the discipline on my leisurely summer mornings. This morning, I found myself writing about how I was going to miss the freedom of the summer yet how I love the routine of the school year. How is that for cognitive dissonance??? The truth for me is that I am like a toddler; I need to routine to function well. I need to have a reliable template into which I can insert my day. Then I can function well. During the school year there is very little flexibility in my daily schedule. I know that if I have one free hour in my schedule and if I want to go take photos it has to be done then, then I will go do it. Without routine, I find myself saying, “I’ve got all day. I’ll do it later.” And then, you guessed it…later comes and goes and whatever I was going to do never happens. I need the routine of routine.
This realization about myself isn’t new. My left brain self and right brain self have been playing tug-o-war with one another for fifty years. What may be new is my perception of this reality. I am finally learning how to balance my desire for both routine with my desire for plenty of room for a creative spirit to move within me.
I don't live in a fantasy world; I know that I don’t have time for everything I want to do and choices, sometimes hard choices, must be made. So, I am learning to prioritize…prioritize honestly. What this means to me is that I am thinking deeply about what I absolutely have to do, primarily work related things, and what I need to do. Work is self explanatory, but need is not.
I used to define the things that I needed to do as those things necessary to make and keep others happy. As a parent, this is a natural thing. I viewed doing things that made me happy as wants, not as needs. We all grew up hearing, “You can’t have everything that you want.” I bought into this wholeheartedly. As an adult with a busy schedule, the pecking order of priorities was always have to’s, need to's, and then the want to's, with time and/or energy often running out before the want to's were even considered.
I haven’t figured out how to add more hours to my days, but I have learned that many things that I once considered wants are really needs and have thus been moved up on my priority list. I need a creative outlet. Creating makes me feel alive. I need to spend time relaxing with family and friends. Community may be my number one need. And relaxing just feels good. I need to sleep more. I am not a very productive or a very nice person without healthy sleep. I don’t need, nor do I have to, to have clean drawers and closets all the time. I don’t need to wear the one or two shirts with the missing buttons. I don’t need to always put the needs of others first. I am not being lazy or totally egocentric here. I am trying to be realistic.
To summarize all of this thinking out loud…I absolutely require routine in my life. That routine must include time for things that I believe deep down in my soul that I need. I also know that my routine must be somewhat fluid so that it can change as my have to’s, need to’s, and want to’s change. I’m glad for the structure of my days now, but I will miss the luxury of my "free" time at home.
Do you have a routine? Do you need a routine? Do you want a routine? Is the routine that you have working for you? Does your routine include what YOU need? Are you open to your routine changing?
Ponder the routine in your routine.
Farewell, August.
Hello, September.
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