What is an ‘ordinary’ day?

Recently someone asked what an “ordinary day” is like for me. I’m not sure why this inquiry came, but I tried to answer in the simplest way I knew how — by bring quite literal and matter of fact. But when I read over what I wrote, I realized there’s much more to the question than the mere words suggest.

In the grand scheme of things, there really is no such thing as an “ordinary” day because just the sheer fact of being alive is so mind-blowing when we pause and think about it for even a few seconds or a minute. Life has infinite potential, in every moment of every day, but in order to keep our sanity, we have to settle into routines that allow us the chance to co-exist with others without terrifying strangers, friends and family with frequent wild outburts of epiphanies. Thus long ago, I realized that my passions would burn steadily but on a low burner and that I wasn’t going to run around like a crazy person proclaiming the imminent end of the world or the ecstasy of sudden enlightenment.

Life unfolds as a series of “ordinary” days most of the time. Then, unexpected and life-altering events, often tragedies, gob-smack us out of our present states of mind, reality and soothingly predictable routines and daily regimens. Often it is these life-altering events that result in loss, grief, and then recovery and re-emergence into life that make us stronger, wiser, and often more compassionate human beings.

Two events shook my world to its foundations in 2020: the loss of my mother after I had been twking care of her for ten years as she struggled with dementia and diabetes; and the pandemic. Both events caused me to dramatically withdraw into self-isolation, both as a natural reaction to grief, which is an intensely lonely experience, and as a necessary precaution to avoid getting a deadly disease that was rapidly spreading around the world.

As a lifelong single person, this trsnsition was not that difficult, but over time it might have presented real psychological problems because I, and everybody else, was in uncharted waters coping with the pandemic, which changed and altered in some way, everybody’s lives.

What allowed me peace and stability for more then a year of pretty much complete aloneness, was my creation of a set routine that became the scaffolding upon which I was trying to build a new life, so to speak.

Month after month, and continuing to the prsent day, I’ve followed a routine, which has been pretty much unvarying. And, being retired allowed me to create this daily routine. It saved me in a sense because without it, I would have had no anchor in my life. This is the great blessing and benefit of routines, but also what can become a perilous disadvantage if you don’t employ their stability to enhance creativity, reach out to others, and fan the sparks of life, continually. Conflagrations do no one any good, least of all the occasional genius who burns out in madness.

Reading between the lines of this rather mundane chronology of my daily routine, as well as appreciating the superficial aspects, one can begin to see how these comforting and predictable formats for living each day allow for the deepest kind of thought and creativity, if nothing else because for me, anyway, the essential and awake nocturnal part of my conscious existence is totally conducive to a more contemplative life.

Here is a brief synopsis of my routines, stripped to the essentials, but bear in mind that as I jotted this down, I couldn’t help but be reminded that in a few short weeks, when I finally move to my new apsetment for good, this current way of life will evaporate, superficially for sure, as I have no idea if I csn successfully transfer my comfortable present routines to this next stage of the journey. There are a lot of unknowns now, and with those come anxiety and uncertainty. Routines enhance the illusion that you are successfully living with certain fixed and predictable certainties in life, and those can end gradually or suddenly.

So for me, “ordinary” life has been lived within these parameters and routines. As I try to cling to them in the waning days of life at the family home, soon to be sold, I’ve entered a stage where I am trying to gird myself for whatever comes next, and embrace the possibilities for good.

My average day:

I get up late (usually 11:30 am) after being up most of the night; have a long, leisurely breakfast listening to the same music channel on Pandora with slight variations as my moods change; read the news online (and these days there’s a lot of major earth-shaking news these days); catch up with my online writing communities; write emails and sit out on the porch, thinking and listening to my wind chimes until well into the afternoon, at which time I go and cram in errands and my walk when I’d rather be daydreaming on that porch i love so much and will soon be only a memory. Supper is usually after 10 and then it’s intensive Internet activity and involvement, as well as working on my photography and writing until the wee hours…

My big move may likely alter these routines a lot, or not much. I’m not sure what will happen. Life is change. I cling tightly to my comfortable routines. That is what satisfies me because it’s all done alone. No on in the background. What bothers me at times is that I don’t have someone there at hand to bounce ideas off or just plain “be there” for solace and comfort when I need it. I deal with it, though. I always have.

Major changes will be upon me very soon. I have a feeling, however, that I’m not going to suddenly become an early riser, much as I’d love to see sunrises greet the beginnings of my days. But who knows?