Routines and Spontaneity

I like my routines. Actually, predictability and safety are what I like. It isn’t that I follow the same routine every day, just that I like to have things available to me in case I feel stressed.

I want my radio programs at the times I expect. I hate it when television shows change times. I don't like to take new paths home. If things around me change too much, I panic. I like my pens, my paper, my desk just the way it should be — just in case I decide to write.

For a number of reasons, I was thrown off schedule some years ago and never really recovered my schedule. My writing has suffered, my mind has suffered. I haven’t been able to restore my sense of order since the turn of the century, which sounds really strange. I was starting to write again about two years ago, it seems, then I ruined the creativity by returning to school. I miss my poetry, plays, and stories a lot. That bothers me.

My hope was that I would be able to write more here, but instead I just want to scream.

I have done very poorly in my new location. I miss my favorite places to eat, my favorite places to sit and relax. I miss knowing where things are, even if I do not go to them. Not being able to get a donut at midnight bothers me more than I can explain.

It’s not that I am not spontaneous — but my spontaneity is predictable. Any impulse I have is for something I know I like and enjoy. An urge to walk the Santa Monica Pier. A desire to eat Chinese food in Morro Bay. A need to drive through Sequoia National Park. When I can’t do the things I need, I can’t relax. I get an urge to eat Mexican food and I want it from one of a dozen places I know — not from anywhere else. It’s a spontaneity with limits.

I miss home because I know it, but it goes deeper than that. The places and things I miss simply do not have parallels where I am now.

What I need is to find new places to sit, places where I can work and not feel tense. So far, that hasn’t happened.