I have stood in my hallway trying to establish whether to brush my teeth or lock the door.
I know how to do both. Neither requires research. There is no philosophical disagreement about the benefits of dental hygiene or home security.
But both need doing, and somewhere between knowing that and doing either, I find myself circling… literally, physically.
Teeth. Door. Teeth. Door.
An impressive amount of internal activity for someone apparently doing nothing.
And this is the part I struggle to explain, because the moment I put it into words, the answer sounds obvious.
“Just do one, then the other.”
Yes. That is precisely the sequence I am trying to produce.
I have worked in security, as a lifeguard, and in support. I have dealt with people in distress, conflict, and situations where something needed to happen immediately.
I know what it is to assess a situation and act.
Yet here I am, negotiating with a toothbrush. By the time one or the other wins, hundreds of steps have been taken, a whole physical exercise accomplished.
It would be funny if the contradiction didn’t also provide such convenient evidence against me.
Because if I can handle something complicated, surely I can handle something simple?
I have asked myself that question often enough. Usually while trying to get the simple thing done.
The difficulty is that ‘simple’ describes the task. It doesn’t necessarily describe my access to doing it. Nor does it tell my mind which simple task takes priority… in this case, they’re equal.
I can explain the required sequence perfectly well. I can recognise how little it ought to demand. I can even stand there becoming increasingly irritated by the gap between the explanation and the execution.
None of that automatically gets my teeth brushed.
This is why I have routines.
There is an order to my morning because coffee and supplements should not require a fresh arbitration hearing every day.
Once I have established a sequence, I have something to follow. I don’t have to keep deciding what comes first while remembering everything that comes afterwards.
That order does work for me. Which is also why having it interrupted can cost more than the interruption appears to justify.
One wrong step can leave the whole day feeling wrong. Something is missing. Or something might have been missed. I can’t always establish which.
Did I take my supplements? Have I taken my medication, or am I remembering taking it yesterday?
Sometimes I have forgotten the supplements. Sometimes the kefir ends up in my coffee instead of the bowl. Sometimes I forget to eat at all.
From the outside, something small has changed. I did one thing before another.
From where I am standing, I now have to reconstruct what happened rather than follow the sequence. What have I done? What still needs doing? What am I about to forget while trying to remember?
Sometimes I can find my way back into what I was doing easily enough.
Sometimes I am back in the hallway.
And even when I carry on with the day, that feeling can follow me. Something isn’t accounted for, but I don’t know what.
The routine gives me an order to follow. It also gives me a way to keep track. When the order breaks, I can lose both.
Which makes questions like “Do you often lose your keys?” in a medical assessment feel almost hilariously absurd.
How do I account for the energy spent maintaining routines precisely so that things don’t get lost?
If the routine works, I can answer “no.” But that answer tells you nothing about what keeping track requires—or what happens when the routine breaks.
On another occasion, I stood outside waiting for a delivery, getting cold.
The driver had said twenty minutes. But I can’t reliably judge how long twenty minutes feels, and their estimate introduces another uncertainty. Maybe they’re closer. Maybe they’re further away.
I went outside because deliveries have missed my door before. Waiting inside, wondering whether that would happen again, felt worse.
It was winter. I had grabbed the nearest jacket—a spring jacket—and I was freezing.
There was a straightforward solution available.
Go inside. Get a thicker coat. Come back out.
I knew this while I was standing there. The coat was not a discovery I made afterwards.
But waiting for the delivery had acquired a priority I couldn’t seem to interrupt long enough to do something about being cold.
How much of those twenty minutes had passed? How long would going inside and coming back take? Would the driver arrive while I was gone?
So I remained outside, freezing, physically spinning in circles and humming loudly to myself, unable to settle whether to stay or go inside for a coat.
And somewhere in all of this, I am wondering what the neighbours must think. What do I look like from their windows, turning in circles as though I don’t know where to go?
Because at that moment, I don’t. I know where the coat is. I don’t know where the driver is. I cannot get being cold and potentially missing the delivery into an order I can act on.
All this for five kilos of plant soil.
I know how absurd that sounds. I knew it while I was standing there.
Try explaining that without sounding as though you simply refused to fetch your coat.
The same uncertainty can swallow the hours before an afternoon appointment. I struggle to start a task, or even something I would enjoy, because I can’t reliably judge how long it will take or whether I will stop in time.
So I remain in waiting mode for hours. Or I arrive hours early.
I can hear how it sounds. That is part of the frustration.
The sensible suggestion arrives at a place I have already visited, while the difficulty remains somewhere between knowing and switching.
There is something particularly exhausting about having enough awareness to watch yourself struggle.
I know the door and the toothbrush do not constitute an emergency. I know being cold is a reason to fetch a coat. I know that getting angry with myself is unlikely to improve the proceedings.
Knowing all of this gives me a detailed commentary.
It does not always give me control.
And the commentary can become another demand. Now I am trying to complete the task while also defending myself against my own assessment of how ridiculous it is that I haven’t completed it yet.
By the time I have done something ordinary, I may have spent far more effort arguing with myself than doing the thing itself.
How would I record that on a list?
Brush teeth: done.
Lock door: done.
There is nowhere beside the tick to put the circling.
The clarity I have sometimes experienced in a crisis makes this harder to reconcile.
Something urgent happens, and the next necessary action can become clear. An ordinary morning can contain several necessary actions, all waiting for me to establish an order.
I recognise that difference in my own experience. I am still working out how to explain it.
But being able to act in a crisis doesn’t tell me what an ordinary day will cost. It doesn’t tell me what the crisis will cost afterwards, either.
I cannot use my most capable moment as a promise that I will have the same access to that capability whenever I need it.
I would very much like to. It would make planning considerably easier.
“Dysregulated by a Tuesday” is the nearest I can get to the absurdity of it.
There doesn’t have to be a dramatic event I can point to. Sometimes the day is full of small things I understand, intend to do, and struggle to put in motion.
The routines and reminders help. I use them because they help. There are still mornings when getting through the routine becomes work in its own right.
Eventually, the teeth get brushed. The door gets locked. Coffee happens.
Someone asks what I have been doing.
“Nothing much.”
It is an accurate enough account of the output.
It leaves quite a lot out.
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