Surviving: Routine Roulette
The Chaotic Blend of Energy and Time
Since my last Substack, I’ve had about five different topics for my “surviving” series floating around in my head and about zero time and energy to manifest them.
Surviving Topic 1: Routine Roulette
Surviving Topic 2: Dr. Chatty
Surviving Topic 3: Broken Safety Net
Surviving Topic 4: Small to You, Big to Us
Surviving Topic 5: Damsel in Distress
I have chosen the survival theme because it fits the feel of so many parts of my life right now: helping my husband survive, surviving parenthood, surviving social and political upheaval.
Here’s the thing. About the time the thoughts start to rise for one of my writings, I realize there’s no time or energy to bake it. Before I know it, the shelf life of the thought is over because the next piece of chaos is shoved onto the table. I would almost say my thoughts are like raspberries. Sometimes I feel if I don’t put them out for consumption within 24 hours, I’ve missed the moment. In reality, there’s still time though. Thoughts, experiences, and reflections of them are more resilient than that.
While I still don’t have a lot of time or energy, I’m tossing out into the world a draft of one of my five topics until they can all evolve into something more coherent later.
For today, let’s talk about Surviving Routine Roulette:
I have discovered routines are pretty critical to my well being. I like to think that I am a spontaneous, go-with-the-flow type person, but maybe not as much anymore. Maybe having a baby changed that? Being a parent forced me to fall into a routine to help my child survive and keep myself and my family in a good space too.
Keeping a little human alive and thriving requires immense physical and psychological effort in my experience. Maybe not everyone experiences it like that, but I do.
I have a good amount of daily energy, but it is finite and can be reduced by certain conditions such as poor sleep, poor nutrition, or lack of quality exercise. If you get into a cycle of diminishing energy, it makes it harder to climb back out.
If I were to grade myself on sleep, nutrition, and exercise, I’d probably put in scores of 70%, 60%, and 50%. In other words, I have some room to improve and ultimately increase my energy capacity. Average all that together, and I am currently functioning at about 60% of my potential.
Regardless, I take that 60% of my finite energy potential and I expend over the various priorities in my life accordingly. To make the most of that 60%, I have to have a process.
By the way, I didn’t even mention the health boost that comes from a quality social life. The very idea of that seems to stay lost somewhere in the missing 40%.
And then there’s the additional 10% random energy deductions that come with every glimpse of a headline related to the social and political conditions.
I don’t want to give the impression that my sleep, nutrition, and exercise are all a result of inaction on my part. Sometimes circumstances and seasons in your life lead you to navigate with that kind of lower capacity. The trick is to learn how to prioritize and how to let others contribute to make up for the deficit.
The first one is easier. The second one is a bit more difficult. In order to work as a team with other people in my life, I still have to have a routine we can share. I’m getting better at it, but at first it was like “making sub plans.” (Ask a teacher you know to explain what that means.)
Then there’s the fact that parenting routines change quickly. With every age and phase, there’s something new to try, a need to adapt to teach a skill or to ensure our child gets what he needs to have the best foundation possible. The newborn phase was one of the hardest. Nighttime sleep punctuated every two hours for feeds. Pumping breast milk. Sanitizing pump parts and bottles. Measuring formula. Changing diapers. Tummy time. Snuggle time. Every month added something new. For the last 2.5 years, our lives have been meaningfully transformed by these new routines.
Enter cancer.
It’s like the newborn phase again, but without the laughs, snuggles, and cuddles. It’s strange to even note similarities between the two, but I remember the day or so after Will got diagnosed with gastric cancer. He was suddenly hyper aware of every sensation in his abdomen.
A sharp gas pain?
Could that be the cancer?
I told him I could relate, in that being pregnant, I was frequently worried whether the baby was okay, but most of the time in my case, it truly was just gas.
You have a baby, and people support you.
You have chemo, and people support you.
P.S. Did I mention how amazing our people (friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors) are? More on that in a later post.
Anyway, the experiences of new parenthood and serious medical diagnosis are such horrible opposites, I know. I guess what I am trying to say is that in the same way all energy was absorbed and funneled to KO when he was born. Now, Will and I are going through an even more hellish newborn phase with this cancer diagnosis. Our goal is still survival, helping Will survive and trying to reach a curative outcome.
The days are long. The routines of survival are different and chaotic. As we learn one routine, new information and dynamics change that. We are doing everything we can, and we are glad to because we want Will to have the best chance he can have to beat this.
As with the difficulties of parenting, we try to remember this is a season, and we hope to look back on it with a sense of victory one day. For now, we keep playing routine roulette and adjusting as the moment demands.