Adjustment

I think I’m a slow adjuster.

When I arrived on North Haven for a travel project, staying in a beautiful seaside cottage where I was working, it took me a few days to feel comfortable in my new surroundings and fall into my new routine. When the ferry carried me back to the mainland after nine days of wall building, it didn’t feel like I had never left. I was delighted to be home and sleep in my own bed, but it only took nine days to fall into a new rhythm for my days, and now I had to fall back into my old ways.

Wait. Falling back? Old ways? In a culture that can be obsessed with self improvement (unless that’s just my Instagram feed), that thinking leans almost heretical.

It’s good to shake things up. To go to new places. To do new things in new ways.

It’s also delightful to sit on the couch in your underwear and drink coffee on a Sunday morning with nowhere to be. And do the same neighborhood walk you’ve done a thousand times (with something over your underwear).

You don’t have to return from every trip, from every break in routine, as some new and improved you. You don’t have to burn your old ways. You can choose to step in and out of them.