Routine and Control

It occurs to me that one of the trickiest parts of leading what has turned out to be a freelance life is the lack of routine. If you have a regular job, you basically know where you are going each day, and for what hours. It is a routine, and you can plan the other pieces of your life around it.

I have never been that much of a rigid "stick-to-routine" kind of person. I didn't make my children nap or eat on a schedule-they ate when they were hungry and napped when they were sleepy. My family's time is not too regulated. As long as we can make things work, I tend to fly by the seat of my pants, and I am fine with that. Or at least I have been so far. Why, then, does the freelance "lack of routine" get under my skin?

Perhaps my ability to keep things loose in many ways for all these years has depended on my having control over the situation. It was my CHOICE not to push those meals and naps. It was my CHOICE to have dinner at 6 or 8 or to go to bed when I wanted.

When you're a freelancer, much as everyone will tell you how nice it is to have control over when you work, the reality is that very few of the work or don't work choices are actually yours. You depend upon someone else to call you to work, and if you choose not to work, it's likely those "someone else's" will quickly stop calling you. So, unless you're working steadily, and even if you are, but in a variety of places, there is no routine. Do you need to get up with the sun? Hard to say. Will you be able to pick up children from afterschool tomorrow? Don't know. Will you have the money to pay the bills this month? It depends.

As can happen with any routine, perhaps a lack of routine (and lack of control over lack of routine) just takes time to get used to. And maybe it actually takes a pretty long time. After all, we spend a great deal of our lives living with some kind of routine, and most habits are a lot harder to break than to develop.

Ask me in a year if I've gotten used to the non-routine. Perhaps by then, it will be normal enough to feel as though I've taken control and made it my routine. Because if I have some control, maybe it will be a non-routine that will work out just fine.