Today is my first day back to work after being off for March break. It was a relaxing week but also a lazy one. Coming back to work today, having to get out of bed early and get ready, actually felt really good. It felt like I was establishing a routine again. The week I had off was filled with sleeping in, lazing around, not doing work. I had goals for the week. I wanted to get a lot of writing done. I wanted to get a lot of reading one. I wanted to exercise a lot. I did some of these things, but they certainly didn't reach the level I had hoped for. And I only did one blog post last week!
Now that I have a full work week, I have structure. Structure is important to making a good routine. I failed to commit to a routine during my week off due to lack of structure. I am not saying that I necessarily need a full-time job to keep a solid schedule. Many people work free-lance or independently and can establish solid routines to get work done. But those people still establish a structure for their weeks and days.
We are creatures of habit. Most of what we do day in and day out, we do out of habit. We don't consciously think about the things we do after doing them for so long. Coming back to work, I hope to establish a better routine. I need to consciously think about this at first to get into the habit, but after the next two weeks, if I establish a healthy routine, I will habitually stick to it and hopefully feel much better.
Having a good healthy routine based around a structure is a good way to simplify and improve our lives. I have a routine of getting up in the morning and exercising, then meditating for ten minutes, and then writing a journal entry before I need to get ready for work. Having this repeated set of activities every morning creates a routine that boosts my creative energy throughout the day. I aim to do these three things (exercise, meditate, write) each morning (at least Mon-Fri) for the next two weeks. We'll see how I am doing after that.