I’ve been thinking a lot about routines lately.

The idea of a happy life (for me, at least) involves routines that serve and maintain you, but I’ve run into problems with routines on that fundamental level when trying to implement them into my own life. It might just be a case of a good habit taking 60 days to become a part of you, so they say, but the routines themselves have been something of a puzzle on my mind.

I feel like a capable person, and one with the capacity for reflection and introspection, so there have been feelings of shame when I contemplate routines that feel as though they should be second-nature and realistic. Instead, I’m left feeling as though they’re aspirational.

It’s a good feeling at the time, filled with optimism as I lay out a routine that I swear I’ll stick to this time – but, niggling at the back of my mind with those shameful feelings, is the thought that as I should be doing these things anyway, manifesting some sense of moral weight to it.

Although it creates a sense of obligation, I feel myself spending more energy maintaining the routine, when the original idea was that the routine was supposed to maintain me.

It’s not a roadblock I imagined running into, so it’s going to be a case of seeing how it goes and adjusting as necessary to make it work and reach that point. I’ve not read Atomic Habits, but a close friend told me that it’s more about becoming a person who does things and takes care of himself, rather than meticulously planning things I feel I have to do.

I think that’s part of the journey, and not a part I’ve considered before.

It’s a fact of reality that we’re not all we could be, myself especially included, and that the starting blocks might not be built as high as expected. All I can do is embrace the humility that allows me to aim as low as possible, making habits one by one, step by step until they become a routine, and build up from there.