Making Adjustments

One of the ways in which I try to cope with what my work demands of me is to consciously develop routines to give structure to my days, such that stuff that needs to be remembered - often quite trivial in some ways, but still necessary - is rendered easy to remember because the routines make it almost automatic. So it's fascinating, and challenging, to find myself living through a period in which predictable routines are falling by the wayside and adjustments to new circumstances have become the order of the day. One result of this is a distinct sense of time slowing down, since the 'taken-for-grantedness' of each day can no longer be taken for granted, if you see what I mean.

There's an enormous comic potential in all this, as the chances of me doing something daft are considerably raised now I'm no longer in anything close to control. Today I managed to walk the wrong way out of a classroom, one with which I'm drearily familiar, and become so disoriented that I completely lost the room I needed to go to and, for a brief moment, wondered if it had been demolished without my knowledge. It took over a minute of stumbling around to find out where I was in a place that I've been familiar with for some thirteen years . Following that, once back at my desk I came close to attempting to drink some tea through the mask I was wearing. Oh dear.

(I suppose I should be wondering if this kind of thing might be related to a descent into senility, but I reassure myself with the thought that I've always been capable of epic daftness given the right circumstances, even as a callow youth. But it's too embarrassing to think of past mishaps so I'm not going to go there.)