A reset window
Yesterday I got back home after being away on a trip for a couple weeks. I went to Toronto to visit my boyfriend, and we went to Europe for a music festival and then spent some days here and there afterwards. We had a really great time, but at the end of a long trip you start to miss some things about your routine at home – things you don’t normally think about, little conveniences and affordances you didn’t realize were important to you. Two weeks is long enough to disrupt your habits (good or bad), and when I finally sat back down on my couch I felt pretty unmoored, like in the dream where you’re wandering the halls of your high school and can’t remember which class is next, can’t find your schedule, can’t remember your locker combination.
Sometimes I don’t mind this feeling too much because it means my autopilot has been turned off. I’m not absentmindedly going from one activity to the next just because I’m used to doing so; there’s a split second before each action where I get to ask myself if that’s really what I want to be doing. There’s a new space there to decide whether to go back to habits that I previously had, or try something else. It’s like a little window of opportunity to reset the ones I might not like, and consciously choose to continue the ones I do like.
That feeling lasted a couple hours and then went away. I sat down on my couch and opened up my computer, and ended up settling back into what I always do: watch YouTube and play on my phone. I was worn out after traveling and still pretty jet lagged. I had made a plan to go to a birthday party but had to back out and crash early instead.
This morning I woke up around 5:00am and couldn’t go back to sleep. But that meant I had hours before starting work, hours that I normally don’t have. I unpacked and cleaned a little, did things around my apartment, made a coffee, didn’t have to rush to open my computer. By the time my coworkers joined me online I was already caught up on everything and ready for the day. It made me feel like I had been given another type of reset window where in the next couple days I could choose to keep being a morning person, or let myself gradually go back to my normal schedule (stay out late, wake up right as work is starting, begin the day in a rush).
To be honest, I still feel out of sorts from the jet lag and don’t really have the energy to start a bunch of new habits. But I like the idea that I get a little chance to tweak some things without having to fight against the momentum of a routine. I like that I have a little window to try something new. I like being able to take a little breath.