Routines Make Our Lives Go Smoothly

Routines are comforting, and make our daily lives feel more secure. Not knowing what is going to happen is much worse than a predictable steady flow of life…and that’s what I have always have had in my home life, just like my parents did.  My dad has a very regular routine of meeting the same old friends for lunch on Saturdays at the local breakfast joint, Rose and Chubbie’s.  They watch movies on Friday nights and during the week, their television viewing is regular, depending on which shows are still being broadcast.

The TV routine changes, since the shows change. But the timing of dinner, and the basic set of what we eat, stays similar week to week. On the weekend a whole new set of routines unfold, getting up later, leisurely watching a slow-paced television show called Sunday Morning, and doing the chores that get neglected during the week. Even my preparations for before Mary gets home are precisely the same–turning on the same lights, making a fire, setting the table and setting down a glass of wine in the same spot each night.

One thing I have told many of my friends and family is how much I dislike working at home. There is no office to go to, no bustling place full of other people’s stories, no, more a house with just a cat to converse with.  I used to think about this when I had the cafe, the busy place where everyone met up in the center of South Deerfield. I thought, what would I do if I closed this place? Where would I go every day to get this injection of people’s opinions, and hear so many stories?

Yesterday I looked at a space with an eye toward creating a place for outcasts like me to work. A place similar to ones being developed in many other towns, shared large spaces that cater to the work at homes who want a place to go. I visited a place in Denver like this, a former industrial building that houses entrepreneurs and marketers on many different levels…all with doorways that faced out into an open area that was used by writers and web developers on laptops.

It would be fun to have a place full of creative people to go see every day. Maybe we can make that happen in nearby Greenfield.