Close to Something Like Routine

The Friday Sign Off

We are about half way through the summer and I am feeling, well, set back and still a bit flipped around. Since starting to teach full-time I find that the first two weeks after the academic year ends and commencement is held I am struggling to find a schedule. This summer has been hampered by minor but seemingly un-ending attacks on what schedule I can create.

This week, I had the wonderful opportunity to help a friend and house sit in his fantastic home in his equally amazing neighborhood in Boston’s South End. Part of the assignment was watching his dog Marge. A one-eyed English bulldog who, it appears, is unlikely to ever call me her #1 substitute human. Marge has grown to tolerate me this week, and she has found me to be as stubborn as her.

The opportunity has also reignited some productivity, not to the level that I was hoping, but it is clearly a better space for me to focus. I don’t know if it’s the change in venue, the different neighborhood, the opportunity to replace the ambient noise of my usual surroundings with the seemingly constant snoring of Marge, but there is something different in my outlook.

One trait of this neighborhood that mine lacks is that I am close to a lot of friends, who will find time to meet me for coffee or lunch. My schedule this week has been “booked and busy” as the kids say, but when I’m not with friends, I am being productive. There is a trait of longevity zones of the world known as “blue zones” that is directly linked to finding community. Finding community means more than coffee breaks and a fantastic goat cheese and asparagus quiche (with a side of perfect frites), it means simply knowing that community exists outside your door.

Marge.

I do love my neighborhood, and the community that exists around me, but there are times where I feel like a visitor even in a space where I have raised my child, where I volunteer and where I engage. In Boston, I feel a need to both explore and to settle down all at the same time. This energy clearly helps me find alignment.

I think what I’m learning, halfway through this summer that hasn’t quite found its footing, is that maybe the schedule isn’t the starting point. Maybe it’s place, and people, and the small rhythms that come from both. The past week hasn’t fixed the feeling of being flipped around. Rather, it has reminded me that when I can see my day through a walk, a conversation, even the steady presence of a stubborn dog, I can start to build it again. Not perfectly, not all at once, but enough to feel a little less set back.

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