Day 13, December 16, 8:27 a.m.

I had to make a choice this morning. When Isaac is in the city sometimes Em crawls into bed with me in the night. I let him. I figure these days are numbered and he sleeps so well when he knows he is safe. This morning, I woke up before my perenially sleep-deprived child and I had to choose: Wake him up so we can walk at 7 a.m. or let him sleep. I let him sleep.

And this had me thinking about routines and habits and choices. If you have ever strived to anything I am sure you were told to establish a routine or to adopt a habit. It seems so simple: If you want to be a success, manhandle your life into the shape you want it to be.

Manhandle. What a load of bullshit.

If there’s one thing the Covid-era has taught me it’s that no amount of self-actualization, no routine, no new habit can help someone who has been given the label “primary caretaker.” It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

I say this all with a certain degree of irony, seeing as I am writing this as part of an exercise in adopting a new habit. But I’m writing this also as a way of trying to gain clarity for myself into why this is so hard, because the part that is actually hard—doing the thing consistently—is not the part I thought would be hard—getting up on time in order to do the thing.

It’s easy to establish a routine, to adopt a new habit, to make good choices when you have someone smoothing your way. But if you are the one doing the smoothing, you have to be prepared to encounter a whole lot of bumps, and it’s not always easy to see them coming.

So what does any of this have to do with walking? Well, this morning, I had to make a choice. And life right now is a vast and unknowable cave system of contradictions. And sometimes these choices, while seemingly meaningless, can have the most far-reaching unknowable consequences. In an environment like this, it’s important to treat ourselves with grace. Choices can only be made based on the information we have at the time of making them. We’re all doing the best we can. #MeetingMorning