Beloved routine 🪩
GAZETTE OLDWOOD #9 (excerpt)
Have you truly chosen your routine?
Did it impose itself on you? Do you work, consciously, to make it pleasant?
Every creative endeavor begins with a routine. And all my life, I’ve cherished that word: routine. It sounds almost absurd to admit, before even turning thirty. And yet. Without it, I would never finish anything I begin. The word routine carries, unfairly, a whiff of dull comfort — but in truth, it is nothing of the sort. It is the act of building solid ground beneath your feet, so you can later go and grapple with the mountains of the artistic world.
Everyone knows the writer Georges Simenon today because one day, Simenon made a deliberate decision: I will become a priest. You didn’t expect that one, did you? “I will be a priest, because at least I will have time to write.” The idea of being paid to do something you love seemed just as far-fetched then as it does now, to those who forbid themselves to dream. “One chapter a day, no matter what,” he said next. And he stuck to it. Which is how he eventually became a writer. Simenon has always been, to me, the perfect example of the pragmatic dreamer.
A routine can be creative — it can also drift far from creativity. This year, I want mine to be nourished by two things: more time spent in nature, and fewer films I did not choose to watch — yes, for nowadays films choose you, if you’re not careful.
Give yourself a break.
A routine does not have to be synonymous with productivity.