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A Good Time for a Life Redesign
If your routine has been thrown into disarray by coronavirus, see it as opportunity rather than embuggeration.
“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” — Annie Dillard
Routines can help us hold it all together. When everything is in turmoil, and life is scary, putting certain habits in place can help create a sense of order, and ground us when we’re feeling untethered.
As with everything I’ve learned in this lifetime, I learned this the hard way. When I first set out across the Atlantic, within a matter of hours the excitement of the departure had evaporated, and I crashed into a state of complete overwhelm. I actually felt rather foolish. I had desperately wanted this adventure, and now I hated it. It was just so damn hard. Even something as simple as boiling water to rehydrate my freeze-dried dinner took ages — to get out all the equipment I needed, fire up the camping stove, put the powdery food in my thermos pot without the wind blowing it all over me, pour the boiling water into the pot without scalding myself, all while the boat pitched and rolled, and waves crashed over the deck.
I fell into a slump. I started skipping rowing shifts. After all, there was nobody to see, and I had three thousand miles to go — I could always…
