Life is about evolving. Don’t stay in a situation that’s not helping you grow mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.— Unknown
I am a creature of habit. This is the simplest way that I could begin to explain how I operate on a day to day basis. I like routine, schedule and order in my life and much of the comfort that I take in my daily living stems from knowing what the day will hold. Summer is, of course, the exception, when I exchange waking up at exactly 7:12 every morning for flexibility and the freedom to do whatever I please on my own time. That said, come September 1st, I will fall back into the routine that I’ve held dear for years. This routine
goes through its changes every year, growing with my school schedule, extracurriculars, work and social life. It may change, but in the end, it is always more or less the same in the end.
This year, however, marks the end of what has been a very stable phase of my youth. After the end of the school year, the routine that I’ve come to know and love as well as all of the familiar places that make it what it is will fade away and hail in a new era in my life. I will be packing my bags and leaving for university, the first stepping stone to “the real world.” It isn’t the notion of moving away from home or facing new academic and social challenges that makes me nervous, but the prospect of having to rebuild the routine that I have meticulously crafted over the course of the last decade.
Change is a great and horrible thing, and people love it or hate it at the same time. Without change, however, you just don’t move.
— Marc Jacobs
No longer will I be waking up in the same bed to walk down the same stairs to the same kitchen to make myself a bagel with cream cheese. I won’t be getting into my car to drive down the same roads to the same school to set myself up to work for the day in the same desk in the same room. I won’t be coming home from work at the same late hour to go to bed and wake up the next morning to do it all over again. Up until this point, all of the change in my life has been subtle and has managed to exist within the framework of what I already knew. Moving away poses all new challenges, most notably having to find routine in an unfamiliar place. It should be said that I am an adaptable person and that I am up for any challenge that the world throws at me. This is different insofar as it flips everything I’ve established as my norm on its head and it is not something that I have ever had to deal with before.
If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.— Peter F. Drucker
All of this said, I’m excited in a way that I can only describe as being ever so slightly morbid. I’m ready to move on with my life, even if that means that I have to tear down much of what I’ve constructed as my daily reality. I want to savour this last year of general normalcy but at the same time, I know that its end iscoming soon. Thus, I am left with a decision. Do I enjoy what time I have left with my little universe and prepare to leave it cold turkey, or do I start making small, consistent changes to slowly dismantle my sense of normal to help ease into the transition?
These are questions that I need to start answering before long and that will require me to think in a way that I’ve never had to before. A new adventure awaits me and now it’s my task to decide how I’m going to approach it. I’m truly looking forward to being able to take control of how I live my life in every aspect although it’s somewhat scary when I think about all that it entails. Once I can learn to accept that it means leaving my comfort zone and sailing out into uncharted waters, I can begin to embrace the change and the new sense of routine and normalcy that it will bring with it.
