Over the past year, I went from having one routine to another. And there were plenty of times that I had no routine that I had to follow. I tried to create my own routine when I had nothing happening. I kept up my workout routine and checked in with my work friends from my box office customer service job on a regular basis. But there was a lot of time that I spent doing nothing productive and I even got into some bad sleep habits with sleeping in later than I would like.
Once I started my new job, it was a bit of an adjustment to go from no schedule to a work schedule. Even though I don’t work full-time, I do have work 6 days a week (soon it will be 5 days a week). I had to make sure I was getting up on time to get my workout done before work. I had something that was making each day feel a bit different. I still struggled a bit with the adjustment, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I think the fact that I worked on my sleep habits a bit before I started at the new job helped me a lot.
And I’ve only been adding more and more to my weekly schedule. I now work back at my old job 3 days a week (that may go up to 5 days soon, but it depends on a lot of factors). I have a pretty good routine going with how to balance my different jobs and make sure that I’m doing the correct work each day. And just last week, I added going into Orangetheory back into my schedule too.
Even though my workouts are the same days a week that I was doing them at home, it’s very different going into the studio to work out. First, my workout is now an hour long when it was closer to 30 minutes for a while. And because this workout is so familar to me, it feels really great to have it back as a regular part of my life. And I’m actually getting out of my house more often because of the workouts. I know that I will be leaving my house at least 4 days a week to work out, but it’s usually more often than that because of other things in my life.
And getting out of my house has been another nice routine that I have gained recently. While I have worked from home for several years, I never spent so much time in my house without getting out and doing something. And just getting into my car and driving the few mintues to my workout has been a really good thing for my mental health. It helps me not feel so alone. I feel like I’m a part of the world again. I feel like there is some forward motion in my life again. Just the simple routine of getting into my car and driving that short distance is something so familiar to me that makes me feel like my old life is coming back now. It’s a great feeling and yet another thing I didn’t realize how much I was craving until I started doing it again.
I do still have a lot of free time every day that I wish I could fill with more fun stuff. But I have a pretty great routine going for me right now for the first half of the day. I am getting up earlier than I used to (so I can make it to my workout) and most of the things I have to do every day are done by either noon or 3pm. So then I have time to relax or do something else after work. And just having an after work time is nice. I allows me to try to create a bit of a separation in my life, even if I can’t get out of my house every day.
And once things are fully open again and it’s safe to live our full lives again, the nice thing is that my work schedule isn’t going to change too much from what it is now. I will hopefully have some more hours with my box office job, but that will just mean that I work until 3pm every day instead of only some days. And my morning workout might slighly change time when they add in more classes, but it will be close to the time that they are now. So in a way, I’m already in my normal schedule for the future. I just get to focus on adding more and more things to my day as I can do them and add to my life and what I get to have fun doing.
You Might Also Like
This Does Feel Like A Normal Routine (or Another Full Workout Week)
Making Busy Days Busier (or I Guess I Like To Maximize Only Certain Days)
Feeling Useful Feels Good (or I Need To Be Productive)
Finally It Feels Like Things Are Normal (or A Week Of Various Self-Care)
New Routine Time (or Time Management At Home)
Finding Time For Friends (or Busting Out Of My Routine)
