Journal #19: A routine of return

06/13/25

What follows every farewell

I visited my wife in mid-April of this year. I spent two weeks in the UK before we flew back to the US together, whereupon my wife stayed until the end of May.

Whilst visits with my wife are always lovely, they disrupt my personal routines quite a lot. It's only natural. We want to make the most of our time together, which means we set some things aside in order to maximize the limited time that we have. I didn't worry about things like keeping up with my yoga, my Buddhist practice,¹ sleep hygiene, etc.

Ever since she left I've been stuck in a bit of a funk. They always seem to follow every farewell. Instead of getting back into my daily routines, I just faff around instead—sleeping in, staying up late, watching too much YouTube, and generally rotting.

My wife always tells me that it's necessary to let my body and brain veg out. From her, I've learned that part of mental and physical health is recognizing when you need time to decompress and stop holding yourself to high standards you can't meet.

At a certain point, though, it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle that's tough to get out of. I always struggle being able to decide where and when to pull myself back up again.

What a chore it is to be lazy

I think the issue is that whenever I try it feels forced, so I'm automatically resistant. I'm not gonna be incentivized to do something just because I feel like I should.

I've always been really hard on myself about this sort of thing and often bemoan my lack of "productivity", whatever that means. I always I feel like I ought to be either doing something more, something different, or something less. Nothing is ever good enough.

I sort of gave up on all of it these past couple weeks. I've stayed up late² nearly every night, which meant sleeping in every morning. I've been eating like crap (I went through two family-size packs of peanut butter Oreos in half as many weeks). I've slacked on dishes, laundry, and talking to friends and family. And it was nice.

But then it became not so nice. I started tallying up all the tasks I kept blowing off. I looked at my YouTube watch histrory and saw that I had watched 10 hours of bullshit in one week. I remembered all of the personal projects I neglected, emails I left unset, and phone calls I couldn't be bothered to make. I noticed how my teeth started hurting and my stomach started growling after living on a diet of Oreos and (vegan) ham sandwiches. I spent an exorbitant amount of time hunting for clean clothes amidst piles of dirty laundry.

It became a chore to be lazy. I was exhausted by everything I didn't do.

Yesterday I finally had enough. I started with brute force and washed all the dishes piled up on the kitchen counter. It took over an hour of washing, rinsing, drying, and putting away stacks of dirty plates, meal prep containers, coffee mugs, etc. I was exhausted by the end of it. It was probably the most "work" I'd done in two weeks. But it was enough to get me started.

A return to routine...

This morning I decided to return to my morning routine. I got up and fed my cats, then went to my small Buddha altar. I laid out my yoga mat, did some chanting, then started stretches. After that I did some back exercises I picked up from physical therapy last year, which I probably haven't done since—including some minor strength training. I was humilated and humbled to see how much my body was in disarray and disuse. After that, I did a short guided meditation on Tara from Robina Courtin.

So I did all that. And I felt really good. And then I spent the rest of the morning/afternoon faffing around, falling back into my recent habit of being lazy and watching YouTube.

It's now gone on 5:30 PM. I feel bad for what I've done in the interim between this morning and right now, which was a lot of nothing. But that's okay. Knowing I restarted a previous routine helps a lot. Just as it took awhile for me to get sick of doing nothing, it'll take awhile to gain momentum doing something again, too.

...and a routine of return

I mentioned to my wife today that I think I finally realized why I am so concerned about being productive, and it actually has nothing to do with productivity itself.

What I really want is to be intentional. I want to do things with intent, and with the knowledge that I actually want to do them. That can include wasting time, being lazy, and indulging in YouTube shorts and peanut butter Oreos. But my hope is that in checking in with myself and my present awareness, I'll be able to take better stock of how I'm spending my time, keep myself on task, and stick to a better routine and schedule. It often feels like I aimlessly wander from one task or activity to the next, waiting around doing nothing until something strikes my fancy. Moving forward, I want to be intentional about what I do and how long I do things for.

Right now I'm writing this blog post. It's nice. I want to do this. But I also need to eat. So, I'm going to finish this post with the intention of eating soon. There's a lot more I could say and want to say, but if I were to continue rambling on it would be an unintentional impulse based on subconscious procrastination.

When I'm stuck in that sort of mood, lost in being idle, I end up doing all sorts of things for a dopamine rush to shock myself out of it, like buying dumb stuff, focusing on things I'm worried about, or throwing myself into a hyperfixation in an effort to get my brain amped up and ultimately motivate myself to get moving. But what happens is that I only get lost further in these weird, maladaptive productivity benders; I'll regain my sense and realize that two, three hours have gone by, the sun has set, my coffee's gone cold, I just spent $20 on something I didn't need, etc.

Thinking back on returning to routine, maybe this could be phrased as something like making a routine of returning, in that I am routinely returning to myself and checking in on my mind, my actions, and my feelings.

I'm going to go make myself some dinner now. I bought ingredients a couple weeks ago for mac and cheese and cornbread. I think it's about time I finally make some! So that's my intention right now. After that, I'm not sure what I'll do. But I know that I will consider my options, and be intentional about my choice.

As always, I'll post updates with how things go. I want to continue building a habit of blogging sprints, too, and this seems like the perfect topic for that.

Hope everyone's doing well! Take care.

✘ Posted on — 06/13/25
✘ Last modified — 2 months, 1 week ago
✘ Link — https://blog.xavierhm.com/journal-19-a-routine-of-return

Footnotes

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