A weird analogy about routines, don’t read if you’re allergic to WTF thoughts

The quarantine taught me about routine.

Yeah, the jokes are on me. At first, I thought that the quarantine will be the only time I can do whatever the fudge that I want to do. Turned out, it taught me to not do whatever the fudge that I want to do.

Breaking the cycle of routines feels pretty tempting at first. No waking up early, no regular shower during a cold morning, no getting jammed on a train full of people with different smells, no walking from the station to your office under the heat of the sun… You can skip all of those. You want to take a bath at 12 pm? Sure. You want to sleep until 4 am? Go for it. You want to finish the whole “Avatar: The Last Airbender” in a full week? Why not, take that challenge. I was so hyped with the idea of working from home that I forgot to take care of my well-being, physically and mentally.

I used to hate routines. I despised it so much that I constantly dreamed of waking up in a different body or country every morning. I don’t hate repetitions, though. Routine and repetition are two different things, in my opinion. Routine is mandatory because it might impact your life when you miss doing it, while repetition is your own choice. I have no problem with listening to the same song on loop for 3 hours a day, but I do have a problem with having to listen to that particular song since I have to fill the silence during a long commute.

That was me four months ago. In July, I started to pick up some routines that might be needed to keep me sane. One night (which is tonight), I’ve come to an analogy about the essence of routines in life.

WARNING: Nonsense alert!

Do life have to be like our face? That one time you miss the skincare, all the pimples start to show up like crazy. The action-reaction chain does its job right away. If you do nothing, it might be too late to fix it so you get back on track not so long after. Unfortunately, that’s not how life works. There’s a buffer time between the action (or the no-action) and the reaction. It might take a month, a year, or not even until you reach mid-life. Due to the inability of human beings to see the aftermath that will happen in the future, we may think that getting off-track wouldn’t impact our lives. We simply aren’t capable to predict how far we can get lost the moment we decide to follow a different path. Actually, getting off-track isn’t always a bad thing. There’s a probability that you’ll end up in a better scenario. However, what do we know about the things that wait for us just around the corner? Are there any hacks or tips & tricks to life, perhaps?

If only life also works like this face… I mean, these acnes are total madness. How come, skipping a skincare routine for merely one night — ONE NIGHT — can do this to my face?

I guess I’m just mad about the velocity of pimples compared to the pace of life that moves like the movie Midsommar — slow, but burning.

(Anyway, watch the movie till the end because the ending is worthwhile).