The Maintenance of a Life
My dad had a pillow.
It’s mine now.
It says:
DON’T BE SO BUSY MAKING A LIVING THAT YOU FORGET TO MAKE A LIFE.
The kind of thing you might see in a gift shop next to a wooden sign reminding you to dance like nobody’s watching. My father wasn’t quoting Camus. It was a pillow.
But I’ve been thinking about it.
Mostly because adulthood is bullshit.
Not all bullshit. I’m forty-three years old. I understand that if I stop paying my bills, eventually someone will come and take something away from me. I understand that if I eat like a seventeen-year-old forever, my body will eventually send me a bill for it. I understand that laundry does not do itself, though I have conducted several long-term experiments hoping to prove otherwise.
I get it.
But somewhere along the way, being an adult became a full-time maintenance program.
You have to stretch.
You have to move.
You have to lift weights.
You have to run.
You have to drink water, which apparently wasn’t important until every person on the internet became a fucking houseplant.
Eat healthy.
Limit sugar.
Limit processed food.
Get enough protein.
Take magnesium.
Take Vitamin D.
Take whatever supplement the guy with the podcast and the abs is taking this month.
Get eight hours of sleep.
Not too much sleep.
Don’t look at your phone before bed.
Don’t look at your phone when you wake up.
Don’t sit too long.
Don’t stand too long.
Meditate.
Go outside.
Get sunlight.
Wear sunscreen.
Save money.
Invest money.
Don’t spend money.
But also travel because experiences are more important than things.
Live frugally.
But don’t deprive yourself.
Prioritize your family.
Set boundaries.
See your friends.
Make new friends.
Network.
Don’t be transactional.
Clean your house.
Do the dishes.
Do the laundry.
Food prep.
Plan ahead.
Be spontaneous.
Have a routine.
Don’t get stuck in a rut.
Try new things.
Find balance.
And somewhere between remembering to take the fish oil and trying to figure out whether I should be walking eight thousand or ten thousand steps a day, I would like to know:
When exactly do I get to live?
Because individually, none of this is bad advice.
That’s the trick.
Nobody is standing outside your house screaming, “YOU WILL NOW DRINK EIGHT GLASSES OF WATER, MOTHERFUCKER.”
They package it nicely.
Self-care.
Wellness.
Financial literacy.
Healthy aging.
Productivity.
Mental fitness.
Longevity.
Every new responsibility comes with an expert explaining how much better you’ll feel once you’ve incorporated one more thing into the permanent daily rotation.
And maybe you will.
But after a while, your life starts to resemble one of those spinning plates acts where nobody asks what happens if you just sit down and let the goddamn plates fall.
I have spent a lot of my life being told, directly or indirectly, that some part of me needs fixing.
The restlessness.
The boredom.
The inability to stick with systems once I’ve figured them out.
The constant urge to change something.
A job.
A project.
A room.
A plan.
My entire fucking life.
Maybe it’s ADHD. Maybe it’s trauma. Maybe it’s CPTSD. Maybe it’s something with a Latin name that a psychiatrist will eventually explain to me while I nod and pretend I haven’t spent three weeks researching it already.
Maybe.
I’m not interested in pretending trauma is a superpower. Trauma is not a superpower. A superpower lets you fly. Trauma makes you check the locks three times and wonder why everyone is mad at you.
I’m also not interested in pretending ADHD is some magical creative gift that turns you into Steve Jobs because you can’t focus on folding socks.
Sometimes your brain makes life harder.
That’s true.
But I am starting to wonder if I’ve been asking the wrong question.
For years, the question has been: How do I become better at routine?
How do I finally become the kind of man who finds comfort in doing the same things every day?
Wake up.
Drink water.
Exercise.
Eat the breakfast.
Answer the emails.
Do the work.
Eat the healthy lunch.
Take the walk.
Do the dishes.
Prepare tomorrow’s lunch.
Read something educational.
No screens.
Bed.
Repeat until dead.
And we’re supposed to call this freedom because nobody is physically forcing us to do it.
Maybe the problem isn’t that I haven’t found the right system.
Maybe the problem is that I hate systems.
Not because I’m a rebel. I don’t own a motorcycle. I don’t smoke in bars. I’m not going to die young in a hotel room with an unpaid tab and a woman whose last name I can’t remember.
I just hate knowing what happens next.
That’s the part of me I’m beginning to look at differently.
Because patterns are safe.
That’s what everyone says.
Patterns create stability. Routine reduces uncertainty. Habits free up mental energy. You don’t have to decide what to do because you’ve already decided.
Wonderful.
Sounds like prison with excellent time management.
The thing is, I’ve spent enough time being afraid of the unexpected to understand why people love predictability.
But I’ve also spent enough time being bored to understand why some people need the unexpected to feel alive.
Maybe that is the contradiction.
Maybe part of me wants safety while another part keeps looking for the emergency exit.
Not necessarily because the building is on fire.
Sometimes because I’ve been in the building too long.
And maybe that’s useful.
Maybe the part of me that gets bored isn’t always the enemy of my life. Maybe sometimes it’s the only part paying attention to whether I actually have one.
Because discovery requires disruption.
You don’t discover much by doing exactly what you did yesterday.
You don’t write anything interesting by accepting the first explanation.
You don’t make a life by following a checklist someone else wrote about how to make one.
The danger, obviously, is confusing novelty with courage.
I’m very good at that.
A new idea can feel like progress.
A new project can feel like purpose.
A new plan can give you the same rush as actually accomplishing the old one.
There is always another system to try. Another reinvention. Another version of yourself waiting just beyond the horizon, where everything will finally make sense because this time you’ve bought the right notebook.
That way lies madness.
Or at least a closet full of unused notebooks.
So I’m not suggesting we surrender to every impulse. Sometimes you have to finish the thing. Sometimes you have to pay the bill. Sometimes you have to do the laundry, no matter how passionately you believe the laundry represents the crushing conformity of late-stage capitalism.
The laundry doesn’t care.
But maybe maturity isn’t becoming someone who never gets restless.
Maybe maturity is learning what to do with the restlessness.
Maybe I don’t need a life built on routine.
Maybe I need a life with a few things that don’t change so I can afford to keep changing everything else.
Stable foundations.
Unstable methods.
The bills get paid.
The work gets done.
The people I love know I love them.
My body gets taken care of.
And within that framework, I get to experiment.
I get to change my mind.
I get to take a different route.
I get to try something stupid.
I get to become interested in something and then become interested in something else.
I get to follow curiosity without having to turn every curiosity into a personality, a side hustle, or a five-year plan.
Maybe that’s what I’ve mistaken for dysfunction.
Not all of it. Some things are dysfunctional. Let’s not get carried away. If you haven’t slept in three days because you decided at midnight to reorganize your entire life around learning the mandolin, call someone.
But not every resistance to the prescribed life is pathology.
Sometimes the prescription is boring.
And maybe the reason I’ve spent so much time fighting myself is that I’ve been trying to turn myself into a man I wouldn’t actually want to be.
The man with the perfect morning routine.
The optimized diet.
The immaculate home.
The color-coded calendar.
The investment strategy.
The consistent habits.
The correct posture.
The right amount of sleep.
The appropriate number of steps.
A life so carefully maintained that nothing unexpected can get in.
Good for him.
I hope he’s happy.
I don’t want to be him.
I want to be responsible enough that my life doesn’t collapse and irresponsible enough to occasionally remember why I built it.
My dad’s pillow says, Don’t be so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.
I’m starting to think that’s harder than it sounds.
Making a living has rules. There are instructions. There are experts. There are articles and podcasts and men with YouTube channels who will explain how to do it more efficiently.
Making a life is messier.
Nobody can tell you exactly how.
And maybe that’s why the part of me that hates boredom keeps refusing to shut up.
Maybe it isn’t asking me to burn everything down.
Maybe it just keeps looking around at all this maintenance and asking the one question nobody seems to have a fucking answer for.
Okay. We’re keeping everything running.
What are we running it for?