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Returning to Routine

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Adventures are thrilling, but they’re also loud. For now, I’m choosing the softer kind of noise: kettles boiling, washing machines humming, toast crunching…

The Highs

August was incredible. Big trips, bright moments, the kind of days that deserve capital letters: The Fringe. The Theme Park. The New Head Office.

There were late nights and loud mornings, too many people crammed into too little space, gig timetables that felt like puzzles and the dizzying joy of being somewhere that wasn’t my own room. Chaos at its finest.

But here’s the truth: they’ve also wrung me out. Amazing, yes. Exhausting, absolutely.

The Craving

Now, all I want is routine. The boring kind. The quiet kind. The kind where I know what Monday looks like, where Tuesday isn’t a surprise party, and where the biggest decision of the week is whether I eat pasta or rice for dinner.

Give me predictable mornings. Coffee in the same mug, at the same table, at the same time and not having to remember what loyalty app I should be using. Give me getting all my chores done by Thursdays, so that knitting on the sofa comes stress-free on Fridays, and all without having to calculate train times and Uber journeys.

Routine is knowing when the bins go out. It’s having a go-to mug for Monday mornings and that the only Friday night outfit I’ll need is a sports bra and gym leggings. It’s deciding how many episodes of Alien: Earth I can rewatch before bed without sabotaging the next day. It’s the hum of the washing machine. The kettle clicking off, steady as a metronome. The too-bright supermarket lights that feel oddly comforting, in the same way that everything in the rest of the supermarket is just where you expect it to be.

The Balance

Chaos is brilliant. It’s also loud. It demands too much, too often. Adventure is a drum solo: dazzling, thrilling, impossible to ignore. Routine is the rhythm section underneath, steady and grounding. The part that makes the music work.

I sat at my desk the other day and realised what I wanted wasn’t another adventure. It was a week where the most dramatic moment was the Google reminder for me to get my laundry out of the dryer.

The Rest

So yes, I’ve had some amazing weekends.

But right now? I want a week where nothing happens. Where the highlight is an empty laundry basket or a perfectly buttered piece of toast. Where the biggest problem is I’ve run out of almond milk or the butter being too cold to spread.

Maybe that’s the secret: adventure isn’t special without the contrast. The parties, the trips, the chaos, they need routine to bounce against.

I’ll take boredom while it lasts. Fireworks always find their way back in, whether I ask for them or not.

I remember some… horrible dream about… stretching

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I stayed up way too late last night.

Not because I was out living some glamorous life but because Alien Earth dropped and apparently I have zero impulse control when it comes to streaming sci-fi. I was going to try and nap in the early evening, but I’m just really bad at napping. Which, when you consider I’m over 40, is just unfair.

But now it’s the next day, and I’m on the floor doing hip and ankle stretches, questioning every life choice that led me here. My body feels like it’s made entirely of knots and bad decisions. My brain is still somewhere in deep space. My coffee is just out of reach.

Stretching like this always makes me feel a bit ridiculous. The movements are slow, awkward, and very much not cool person material. But here’s the thing: I need it. My ankles have the mobility of a stubborn Victorian door hinge, and my hips did not enjoy pregnancy fifteen years ago and just won’t stop reminding me. If I don’t keep moving them, they will absolutely stage a rebellion.

So I keep going. Leaning, twisting, holding. Leaning, rotating, stumbling. Leaning, stretching, swearing.

It’s not glamorous, it’s not fast, and it’s definitely not going on an 80s workout montage. And when I finally stand up, I feel a little better, a little more human, not smug enough to justify last night’s sci-fi binge. But at least I did it.

Will I go to bed earlier next time? Absolutely not. We might just have to resign ourselves to the fact that I’ll be awake at one in the morning every Wednesday for the next 7 weeks.

But I’ll stretch again tomorrow. Consider it my way of negotiating peace between my passions and my joints.