Noble Deeds (Demo)

Entry 3: Conformity

  My daily routine is called a daily routine for a reason. I do it the same way, every day, and I probably, hopefully will for the rest of my life. I wake up, I take a shower and get dressed as everyone does, I put on my glasses, I sit down at my table and have breakfast with a cup of rooibos tea, put on my lab coat, throw on a scarf, head to work, come home, do some grading, do some tidying around the apartment, have dinner with a cup of chamomile tea, do the dishes, and go to bed. Every single day. Sure, I purposely allot myself too much time to clean my apartment in case I wish to substitute it with something else that consumes my time, but otherwise, I refuse to break this schedule. I'm even reluctant to leave home without my lab coat and scarf. I've never understood why, but I've always felt the most comfortable I've ever felt wearing a lab coat and a scarf. It's who I'm meant to be. I wore a lab coat and a scarf to college every single day, even when all we were doing was taking notes. Hell, if I didn't have to wash my lab coat, I'd probably never take it off. I put it into my everyday routine not because I had to, but because it seemed important to the happiness that drives my own enthusiasm. This entire schedule is specifically designed because these things in life are that important to me, and I should hope that when you all develop to a point in life where it's time for you to break away from your parents' jurisdiction and form the path to your own life, that you will do the same, and form a schedule that you feel motivated to follow, because it is important to you. 

  I understand that some of you are at the stage where you're afraid to break away and take the leap; to be free from those comforting chains that wrap around your waist and prevent your wings from spreading. It's perfectly fine. I was afraid too. When I still lived at my parents' place, I thought my life was as happy and content as it could possibly become, but now that I've experienced what it's like to be my own uninfluenced person, I wouldn't go back if I had the choice. You have to start living before you can tell yourself you're too afraid to keep living.
Nevertheless, regardless of these things, whether or not you're a freak like me, I suppose, you may have a morning routine that you follow, and, of course, depending on whether or not you're a freak like me, you may follow your routine to an excruciating point or to an infinite tessellation of points; far and few between. All of us have to have some form of routine and order in our lives, am I right? Or am I crazy?

  I'm probably crazy, but my main point is that when you undergo a major change in your life like breaking away from your parents, or going to school for the first time, or even the mystical battleground of puberty, your routine is completely shattered. I'm terribly uncomfortable with anything changing itself from what it once was. I'd imagine some of you are as well.
  The beginning of school ended me, and everything that I was. I was completely dissipated by it. Instead of waking up and grinning, motivated to get myself pulled together by the things in my schedule that make me happy, as I have done nearly, if not every day for the past 7 years, I would be doing something completely different that I wasn't used to experiencing.
  Of course, at that time, I hadn't been as developed into my personality as I am today, and was unaware that such simple things as lab coats, scarves, and herbal tea would be things I found so radiantly as the paragons of enjoyment, and so my morning routine was something I had never enjoyed. Furthermore, when it changed into something completely unfamiliar to me, it was made even worse. I had to go from waking up whenever I wished to waking up at a specific time, getting a shower, throwing on clothes, etc., and going to a place I had never gone before with people I'd never seen, and didn't want to see. Mind you, I had no experience with speaking to people my age. I had no will to speak to people my age. From the very dawn of my being, I was encouraged to believe that kids my age were wretched creatures, and that any interaction with them would corrupt me completely. And, of course, from the very beginning of my time inside the school building, no one wanted anything to do with me. With it being publicly and widely known in Kindergarten that I had been able to read since the age of two, I was seen as different from the other human beings in the classroom.