TRANSCRIPT
I haven’t recorded in a while, and as I was sitting down to record today, I was thinking I’d like to talk about the value of routines. The reason it popped into my mind is that my recording process, making these videos, happens as part of a routine, and I get very comfortable with it. I have a lot of different steps I do to prepare myself for recording, and then I record. Even the recording, it’s part of a routine for me—the way I prepare my thoughts before I talk, and then I jump into it. I’m more comfortable when I’m in this routine. I can make a lot more videos of higher quality, I find. When I’m out of my routine, like now, it’s like, is my video going to be good or not? Sometimes I don’t feel like I can connect with my audience as well. I can’t collect my thoughts as well. I make mistakes.
The reason, actually, specifically this video popped into my mind is, as I was preparing today to record, I was having this nagging feeling inside of myself that I was doing something wrong. I was leaving something out in my process. I mean, I put on my shirt, my uniform, with a white shirt on underneath, and I got my hair ready, and I trimmed my facial hair properly, and I got my chair set up, and I had the light set up, and everything was kind of ready. I had my breakfast, I’d brushed my teeth, but it was like I was leaving something out in my routine, and it was like it was distracting me from what I was preparing to talk about, which was deep childhood trauma, healing from trauma, etc., etc., my usual subject matter. I couldn’t figure out what it was that I was leaving out.
Finally, when I sat down, I was getting focused, getting ready to talk about trauma. I looked up at the camera, and I realized the camera wasn’t there. I was like, oh yeah, that’s what I left out! I actually hadn’t even brought my camera out of the closet. I hadn’t set up the tripod. I hadn’t set up the microphone. I left out the only thing, actually, that I really needed. And it was like, oh, that’s when I thought, you know, I’m gonna make a video about routines because I am out of my routine, and I make mistakes when I’m out of my routine, and life gets messy when I’m out of my routine, and I’m not as productive when I’m out of my routine.
I’m going to talk also about the value of not being in a routine because my life goes back and forth between really strong routines and often a complete lack of a routine. But the value in routines, when I’m in a routine, I get myself very centered. My sleeping gets on a routine, which is a wonderful thing. I go to bed after the sun goes down. I wake up right as the sun is coming up. I eat my breakfast. Often, I eat the same kind of healthy food in the morning, take my shower, brush my teeth, and then I dive into my work, often on the computer in various ways, or making videos, or editing, writing often. Usually, I work all day, take a meal break at a certain point, sometimes walk around a little bit just to stretch my arms and my shoulders, my legs, and then go back to work. I focus, and I’ve been doing that process of hard focused work for decades. It’s basically been the essence of my work life as an adult.
When I was a therapist, I was in the strongest routine I think I’d ever had when I was working five or six days a week, all day long, all of the best of my hours, sitting, listening to people, listening to myself, reading, writing, exploring. Journaling is also a big part of my routine, and what I find is beautiful things come out of this centered time of working, of setting aside a time for my process to go within, to go without in terms of going outside of myself and connecting with other people, even connect with an audience. But to be in myself, to have that centered relationship with me is incredibly valuable for me.
I think without routines, I know it, in fact, without routines, I can’t really produce. Without routines, I can’t really work. I can’t focus properly, and so I need it. I need this structure in my life, and I’ve talked about that in other videos at various points—the incredible value in structure, not only for external productivity but for internal healing. The structure of food, sleep, relationships with others, work, internal focus, meditation, journaling—all these different things that are very useful. I saw this when I was a therapist with the people who I worked with who could participate in a routine, who could get themselves into a routine, not just in terms of connecting with me in therapy but in their lives. Often, they could heal in a faster and more consistent way. Certainly, it’s been true for me. Without routines, I don’t know that I could have done that consistent healing work, learning the lessons that I needed to learn, putting those pieces together in order to grow, to make sense of my life, to make sense of my history and my problems. It’s been a long structured process—a long structured process of hard work.
And then there’s the value of being outside of the routine. That’s the history of my life now for the last 12, almost 13 years since I quit being a therapist, where I go very strongly back and forth, swinging to the poles of routine and then out of routine. For instance, hmm, hi, actually very recently came back from traveling, hitchhiking in southern Africa. I was in Zambia, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, standing out on the side of the road, hitchhiking, meeting people, getting way off the regular tourist track, exploring life in a very different way.
One external expression of this lack of routine I was thinking about as I was sitting down to record is that maybe people noticed my hair looks different. This is a haircut that I had, what was it, about five, six weeks ago? I wanted to get a haircut when I was in Zambia. I was in a pretty remote town, no tourists, and I found a barber shop. I was like, would you cut my hair? They spoke a little bit of English. As it turned out, the barber who actually cut my hair did not speak English, but they were not sure if they wanted to cut my hair because they’d never cut a white person’s hair. But I said, I really don’t care. You can’t make a mistake. Just worst case scenario, and I had someone translate this to the barber for me—worst case scenario, you just shave my head. And they didn’t even have scissors; they were using electric clippers.
So he started cutting my hair, clipping my hair, and it ended up he really didn’t know what he was doing. And I totally get that because, like, why would he know how to cut my hair? But he was nervous; his hand was shaking, and I was trying to explain. Everybody explained to him because a lot of people had come in and watched this process of this barber cut this white guy’s hair. I said, please just have fun, don’t be nervous. Worst case scenario, just take it all off. So he ended up having a good time, but he took it almost all off. And I saw what my hair looks like when it’s pretty different. I realized, oh my God, I really am going bald. My hair is really getting quite thin. But this is five or six weeks later, and now I’m out of my normal routine, also hitchhiking around in very remote places, through villages, through the bush, through national parks, listening to people not just speak languages I’d never heard but language families I’d never heard. I heard people speaking Koi Koi, one of the click languages, and them trying to teach me some words and me learning words like this that, oh my gosh, it was like, actually, it was quite fun but stressful—not in the necessarily always an emotionally stressful way because I actually felt very safe. What I found is that people really took care of me. They wanted to protect me. They loved having me around, loved having me along in their cars and trucks. But stressful in terms of not having a routine, not having a normal way to.
Live not sleeping at my regular hours, sleeping in truck beds, sometimes sharing beds with people who I had just met, sometimes very small beds, waking up with neat people’s knees in my back or their feet in my face. This is like not my normal life. And sometimes not sleeping so well, waking up at three o’clock in the morning to begin a journey, sometimes going to bed sometimes at three o’clock in the morning because a car or truck I was in was driving all night long. Things like this, especially at my age, 50, it’s like not exactly easy. Definitely not a time for me to be productively writing so much.
But what I’ve found is that strongly breaking my normal routine here in New York City, in this bounded square cubicle existence with concrete all around me, breaking this existence, being out in the wild world is vital for me. It’s vital for my growth. It provokes me to think in different ways, to empathize with people who may have and do have radically different lives from my own.
Actually, it was a problem that I had when I was a therapist for those 10, 11 years. I was a therapist where my routine became so strong to the point of being rigid that my life needed to be shaken up in a way. I was becoming sort of frozen in my existence, rusted even away in a way, and getting out of it was exactly what I needed.
I think part of the problem also is that I wasn’t having enough fun in my routine. Now, people have said maybe you could have thrown more fun and more variation into your routine of being a therapist, and maybe I could have. But in a way, back then, the focus I had in my existence was so much on healing mine and others that it, in a way, I couldn’t.
And I think I needed to radically break my routine in a big way, get out, travel in the world, hitchhike, be sometimes the exact opposite, at least externally, of being a therapist. I think internally that part of me, I know that part of me has always remained, even when I’m out in the world now.
Just like, for instance, hitchhiking in Africa again and again and again. And I’ve seen it in so many other places, pretty much everywhere where I travel, where I hitchhike, no matter what language I am communicating in, people are fascinated with me having been a therapist, wanting to talk about it. It’s amazing how much people know, how much people want to share when they feel safe to talk about it.
Sometimes when I’m hitchhiking, I even form a routine. I just had one truck driver that I hitchhiked with through a big part of Zambia and a huge amount of Namibia. I stayed with him for 10 days, shared his life, his food, his truck bed even for 10 days. And by the end of it, I think by about day eight, we’d both pretty much lost our voices, not because we were sick, but because we had been talking non-stop about life, history, psychology, our history, our family history, our ancestry for me and for him.
From what I gathered, it was a fascinating experience, and we formed our own mini routine, our mini team. I wasn’t very useful to him in his job of delivering food in this giant 22-wheel truck, but I think on an emotional level, I think I was useful to him because I think also I was shaking up his normal routine.
He’s not certainly used to driving and sharing his truck cab and his bed and his life and his food with someone like me. But I also saw that what we shared in common, coming from our own respective cultures and backgrounds, was that we both shared an openness and a flexibility, a willingness to adapt our routines to a new life for the sake of new thought, new emotions, new growth, new perspective.
And I think as much as I gained from sitting with him, he gained from sitting with me. And now it’s been a couple weeks since I parted with him, since he dropped me off in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, since I left that country, since I’ve flown home, returned to my more normal existence.
And now as I sit down to talk about the subject of routines or lack thereof, the value in both, I think of him. He gave me permission to talk about him. He gave me permission to write about him. He knows a lot about my life. He actually wanted me to. And I think in part it’s because he’s proud of his country, his world, his life, himself. He said it many times, he said, “I have nothing to hide.”
And you know, I feel the same way. And so here I am coming to share about his life, my life, our life, our world with you for perhaps hopefully the betterment of all.
[Music]