Signs

Since I've started working at a real job, I've figured out a good basic morning routine. Alarm. Snooze. Alarm. Snooze. Alarm. Get out of bed. Shower, brush teeth, etc. Make tea (one for home, one in the travel mug for work). Eat (and while eating, to my morning web surf). Get dressed. Walk dog. Put on make-up. Finish preparing tea for work. Leave.

It works pretty well and runs about 1.5 hours from first alarm to leave (it would be lots less, except for the snoozes).

Since routines keep the mind focused (or rather, allows you to do things while the mind is half asleep), one can get ready with a minimum amount of stress or worry. And as such, I have a routine once I get to work as well. Park car. Put mug of tea on top of car. Get bags. Go through security. Get to office. Out of bag comes appointment book, Palm Pilot and cell phone. Log in. Check e-mail. Relax. Drink tea. Get to work.

Well, it's always a bad sign when something in the regular routine goes awry for one reason or another. It didn't happen at home. It happened in the work routine. And caused great disruption to the whole of the routine. Today, on the very simple "Put tea on top of car" stage, my tea mug decides to jump off the car and spill itself all over the car and the ground. I think it decided to commit suicide as the mug itself broke (and it was a travel mug, so that's no easy feat). It was such a shocking thing that all I could do for about a minute was look at the ground, watching the last of my tea flowing out of the mug into the crevices of the asphalt.

After waking up from this apparent hypnosis, I realized that I had the rest of the day ahead (and it was only 8:30am), and I needed to get moving. It was so disorienting. I was so confused.

It was at that moment that I realized how, we as human beings, need our habits to function - some much more than others. I don't think I had ever really appreciated it as much as a grad student, since my schedule was so much more fluid. I also realized that I am quite unfunctional in the morning, although I think I'm awake, I'm really running on the backup memory until I have my first sip of my second mug of tea.