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balance, boring, chaos, meds, routine, serendipity, sleep, spontaneity, structure, travel
Life had settled into such a nice routine. Dull as they can be, routines really help me stay stable and productive.
But as always, the routine gets up-ended periodically. As in, every time I get on an airplane. This week two flights brought me about 2K miles across the country to a much sunnier (but still cold) location. There was an agenda, but it’s not my usual routine. I get flustered trying to get my things together at home; it’s actually simplified on the road, but the problem is that I forget key tasks and steps that I need to attend to when I’m thrown off routine.
Life routine – act 2 by José Encarnação, CC BY-SA
Like taking my meds.
I don’t like tossing back a dozen pills (yes, literally) in front of everyone, but sometimes they need to be taken with food, so I have no real choice. I’ve often had a small snack in my room to buffer my stomach for taking meds before breakfasting with others. Luckily my current mix doesn’t cause nausea on an empty stomach, so trying to hide my drug-chugging habits while I’m at a professional event is a lot easier. For now, anyway.
And then there’s going to bed.
The go-to-bed routine at home is pretty stable, predictable, and I’m well motivated to jump into the nest with Mr. Chickadee. (No elaboration necessary, I hope!) But by myself – well, who cares? I try to do the routine, but inevitably my attention is distracted, over and over, and before I know it, the night is nearly gone. All the time I have left is a couple hours, barely enough for a nap before I have to be coherent. (As I edit this post, it’s 3:30 AM, so I’m closing in on “only a nap” again, already.) Even having a roommate doesn’t help me follow a normal sleep pattern.
Even when I’m not on the road, I struggle to maintain a weekly routine, but I work both from home and in an office. The office days are busy, social, full of meetings. To some approximation, it’s easier to make a routine of those days because my commute and the meetings chop up my hours into increments I can then allot to tasks. But when I’m at home, I can arrange my time any which way I want, which is often disastrous due to executive dysfunction. I have yet to come up with a stable, functional routine, after mostly working from home for three years.
Other routines around home include the morning routine and the coming-home routine. They are good, comforting routines. They get me through days when I can hardly see through tears, and days when I can’t hold a normal conversation because I forget what I said 10 seconds ago. Weekends are full of possibility, but I still do best when we plan our time in advance. No to say that there’s no spontaneity; I just need guidelines for what to expect in order to make transitions less painful.
Taking the time between Christmas and New Year’s off made that all the more apparent – if I don’t know what to expect or plan on, I’m at loose ends. I do whatever seems most pressing at the time, and get only a fraction of the least important things done. The most important things are always left by the wayside because I couldn’t figure out when to try to work on them because I didn’t know what to expect of the day. That frustrates me a lot and makes me very mean with myself. OK, cruel is more accurate. You get the idea.
Although I rely on routines to get through my days, I also resist them bitterly – they quickly get boring and I’m a high stimulation gal. Travel is my chance to break free from the fetters of my self-imposed prison of processes. Unfortunately, I usually take it a little too far, end up hypomanic, and then crash as soon as I get home – and return to the comfort of my routines.
It’s a constant struggle for balance between routine and chaos, trying to find just enough stability without sacrificing the pleasures of spontaneity and serendipity. To be honest, I’m not winning the fight.
Oh DeeDee, i do feel for you. But you are not alone! So many of us have the same “issues”, so never be afraid to talk about them/share them. and things like taking meds in public, I – and my partner – just do it discreetly as part of our meal. Doesn’t Mr Chickadee help you with them, like my partner does?
Mr. Chickadee doesn’t get to travel with me most of the time. He does help remind me to take them when I’m at home though. I’m trying to figure out a technique for discretely consuming meds when in company, but haven’t quite gotten it down yet.
I know the struggle. Routines are like safeguards, and sometimes it feels like we have to resent them for curbing our creative minds. Having the controlling part and the rustling one fight each other, while we suffer from the casualties both of them bring upon us! They should learn to live together, shouldn’t they?
I create routines and my creative self make them artsy so that they would not feel so dull as they are. Then my controlling part loses lots of time making sure it still contains the creativity free-style in check: I get very frustrated in an ever changing world, where we have to adapt so quickly and so often to change.
I enjoy following your posting more regularly now that I have subscribed and receive a blurb in my inbox. There are so many things that you describe and elaborate on I can relate. I am very thankful for your blog!
Otir, I agree and feel with you too! I’m creative too, and try everything I can to avoid boring routine (however important it is, like taking the meds).
I’m reading a lot about the “links” between our bipolarity (mine is now more “positive bipolarity” since the meds and the revised lifestyle started working) and our creativity – and wondered if you had any thought on this.
I have some artlcles and references I could share with you (and others) if you would like.
or DeeDee, should I share them to the whole blog?
All the best, John
John, I definitely believe that creativity and bipolar disorders go hand in hand… If you have read Kate Jamison’s literature, you certainly have had some scholarly advice on it.
I once wrote a piece for a blog on writing and depression. That blogpost went private since (on blogger) so I republished my own comment on my server, and it can be read here: http://j.mp/NjRYcY
Thank you for elaborating on my contribution!
Tres bien et merci beaucoup, Otir. I will read the references you mention tomorrow!
John, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I’d kindly suggest you share your research on creativity on your own blog. I would be very interested to see to your writing and happy to share out a link to it, but this particular blog space is for me.
ok, DeeDee
I find the routines supremely useful, but it’s hard to know when to let it drop! It also takes me a very long time to refine and thoroughly establish a good routine, so it’s kind of an investment and after awhile it seems hard to let that go.
I am a lot like this as well. Even now, when I don’t have a real schedule that I have to keep. I have to plan out every thing I do. That is why, I have such a hard time with people coming to the door uninvited or without prewarning. If I get out of my routine even do to a visit from one of my children, I am out of wack for days afterward. I know it is terrible. It was really hard on me when I worked. I had a schedule for the week, but every day something would change. I am sure that this is really, really stressful on you with the job you have. I don’t know how you handle it. Bless your heart! xx
Yeah, the “without warning” thing is really jarring. I have to work so hard to get to work that anything that interrupts it suffers my wrath.
I rely on my iPhone to tell me when to get up, when to take pills (yes, on my own with a snack or just before a meal but never in front of the masses), when to start my bed-going routine with the teeth etc. This helps me immensely since my inner control station goes on vacation whenever I do. Take care of yourself!
I wear a wristwatch to remind me to take mid-day meds, but other than that, well – just yesterday I was 30 miles down the road before I realized I’d left my phone at home.
If it’s not somehow attached, I can’t count on it. I can have something in my hands one moment, look around the room without moving a foot, and have lost whatever I was holding onto. Seriously. I do it all the time.
“It’s a constant struggle for balance between routine and chaos, trying to find just enough stability without sacrificing the pleasures of spontaneity and serendipity.” I say, write, or sing a version of this nearly every day. Even saying ‘routine’ produces the same acids in my mouth that cooking spinach does. One thing that seems to help me when I’m feeling dull from it all (if I remember to do it) is to set up little challenges for myself, little games. I started trying it after reading “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. So, for example, on my drive to work, when I’m bummed out about the same… old… thing , I’ll see if I can find 5 things that make me honestly smile, or see if I can take a different route and still make the same time, or at home, I’ll try to pick out something to wear with my eyes closed to see what I get… The games keep me aware, almost ‘in flow’, yet allow me to ignore the drudgery of the same routine day after day.
Next week I’ll be on the road. So the challenge now is to find little challenges to help me avoid spiraling into chaos. Your post came at a good time. Thanks.
PB, thanks for sharing your strategy. I think including games or challenges for myself might help me to develop and possibly even maintain a routine. If nothing else, they should be fun and help exercise my mind and maybe even bring a little bit more joy to my days.
I’ve heard of that book – I’ll have to put it on my (very long) reading list!
I like the idea of the little games; there’s gotta be something that would work for me. I don’t mind a bit of routine, but boy do I get bored quick…
I have to agree. The meds have smoothed things out for me, but rarely am I *completely* asymptomatic for more than a few weeks. Cognitive behavioral therapy is helping me develop the skills for dealing with the frequent mood shifts, and I have hope now that one day I’ll be better able to manage my life with this disorder. But I think the seasonal episodes will always be an issue for me.
I use a light box to help with the seasonal episodes, and it does help, but only so much.
I think one of the key things to keep in mind here is that the mood cycles in bipolar can occur on very different time scales. The “classic” version expects rather long mood cycles, but mine are usually in the 5-7 day range, which puts me on the line between BP I and BP II in terms of episode duration.
I can relate so much to needing but simultaneously resenting routines! I know I need to structure my day, but I worry about putting in too much structure because I want to be able to be spontaneous, or keep my schedule flexible so I can add a new commitment (such as a job).
I can create a schedule for how I want to structure my days, and even include options for flexibility, but then I fail miserably when it is time to follow through. I find that keeping a to-do list, dedicating a day to a couple of tasks but being flexible regarding when they happen, and doing things when I think of them instead of trying to schedule in a time, all seem to work better for me.
Do you have any suggestions for taking meds at the same time each day? That’s something I struggle with, even when I’m home.
Thanks for your honesty sharing experiences on your blog.
I spend so much time on scheduling and planning, and then never seem to follow through. I’m always getting sideswiped by something random. I just read David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” and I think there are some techniques that will help me manage my time better. Here’s hoping anyway…
Most of the time people seem to use a watch or phone alarm to remind them to take meds. I keep my pill minder on the breakfast table and my hubby reminds me if I don’t empty it, so AM meds are no problem for me. For PM & PRN, I make sure I have them in my pocket all the time, even at home, because if I wait even two minutes after that alarm goes off, I’ll forget.
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