Saturday, December 30, 2023

routines

Sartorias writes about routines, and the freedom to establish them for yourself once you're retired and don't have to build them around work requirements.

I find in a sense I still do. I build my day, not around self-selected enjoyable activities, but around necessary errands and tasks, for the simple reason that, if I don't, I'll forget to do them. Sometimes I forget some of them anyway, especially if my day is interrupted by other tasks. It goes something like this:

  • Morning ablutions (a complex set of tasks already, but anything more would be TMI)
  • Morning computer routine. This one is voluntary: I check my e-mail, read some blogs (mostly ones which have regular new posts), and read the local newspaper online, in particular the weather, copying the forecasts into a spreadsheet so I can keep up to date on what's due.
  • Morning pills: divided into four parts (because only some of the medicines belong in the daily pillbox), which I have to keep memorized or I'll forget to take one or more.
  • Afternoon tasks: clean the catboxes, put a pitcher of water in the fridge for dinner. (If I do that earlier, it'll get in the way of B's lunch stuff.)
  • Making dinner. (I cook, B does the dishes.) It helps if I remember to decide on the menu earlier in the day, so I can go out and do any necessary shopping. But that remembering is an aspiration not always achieved.
  • Dinnertime pills: divided into two parts.
  • Evening ablutions.
  • Bedtime pills: divided into two parts.


There are also weekly tasks: setting up my 7-day pillboxes, ordering and picking up the weekly grocery order, taking the trash and recycling out to the bins and putting them out by the curb, etc. Other tasks of about that frequency, like laundry and fueling the car, I do as needed and not on a regular schedule.

And monthly tasks, notably paying bills (which come in multiple parts, as while most of our bills arrive at the same time, some arrive at different times and can't wait for the monthly rush to pay).

And even annual tasks, notably taxes; and also the purely voluntary one I'll be doing tomorrow.

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