One Month On – New Life, New Routines, and Reflections from Edinburgh

Life in Vancouver for me was made up of a set of routines: Wake up and make coffee. Sit at my desk and work and be interrupted at least once by my mother looking to “catch up”. Go for a walk and procure sundries and ingredients for an evening meal. Work the afternoon.  Have a shower. Cook supper. Watch Netflix until I fall asleep. There was the odd football match once a week and maybe a visit with family or friends, or occasionally I’d skip out on an afternoon and treat myself to the cinema but the routine was pretty standard. It may sound boring, but I would have described it as comforting.

I’ve discovered that, whether we like it or not, routines are hard to escape. There is a certain stigma that comes with the concept of a life run by routines that lacks a certain spontaneity which is desirable. Were people to post on Facebook or Instagram only news of their daily cup of coffee or brushing their teeth I imagine they’d lose followers pretty quickly. As such, it’s the things that are outside our ordinary that we tend to share with others. But now, even though so much of what I do is outside what has been my ordinary, I find that even in just one month that I’ve developed new routines that in themselves now seem ordinary at least to me.

I’m a regular on the Airbnb website and I check google flights and google maps just about daily. I still wake up early and have my coffee and work the mornings from about 6am to noon, but there are days where I have to pick up and go and all this is done with near military style precision. Unpacking and packing up my life has to be done in under a minute. In the past, I would fling a sweaty t-shirt across the room where it could sit for days before I would transfer it to the hamper, but now the few clothes that I do have, dirty or not, are never more than a few inches from my case. Everything I own has a spot in a bag and if I’m staying for longer than a night there might be a temporary transfer, but generally speaking nothing moves too far from its designated location. Work itself hasn’t changed all that much except that I finally find myself at a point where I’ve taken on too much and have been reflecting mightily about the future scale of my business – perhaps a story for another day – and it takes up the majority of any single day to the point where I haven’t had a day without work so far this year and it’s getting to be a bit overwhelming. Still, I’m always somewhere new and worth discovering even if there’s nothing around. In a big city like London, where the pace of life was so fast, there was always somewhere to go and something to do, but even in a place like Northumberland or Sussex there was always somewhere to walk to or hike. No matter where I am I make a point to go out every day and try to discover something new. This is a new routine that is vastly removed from the old routine and is probably the most rewarding. Equally rewarding is the process of moving from one place to another place. I spend a lot of time thinking about modes of transportation, the time it would take to get from one place to another and the associated costs, or whether there’s a cost benefit to taking the bus versus taking the train. The Trainline app that allows one to schedule and pay for UK train and bus tickets on their phone has become quite handy in this regard and I spend a lot of time on it calculating whether it is better to purchase a ticket direct to wherever I’m headed or to buy several tickets to shorter destinations in between. One example of this was the trip I made from Chester to York. It was considerably more cost effective to travel from Chester to Manchester, then from Manchester to Leeds, and finally from Leeds to York than it was to purchase a single ticket from Chester to York or any combination thereof.

One thing that dominates the ease and functionality of my existence is a stable and speedy wi-fi signal – it can completely alter my mood for better or worse. Occasionally I need to completely stop for an extra day and devote myself nearly completely to some work-related project or task and a reliable wi-fi signal can be the ultimate determinant of where I decide to do this. In some small way, with the day from sunrise to sleep being devoted solely to work, it can seem like a day lost, but it is that sacrifice that opens the door to the other days that allow for greater exploration. The trains are where I prioritize my writing over my work. Sometimes I’ll plan a train trip for the day and bring my computer just to make sure I write. Sadly, the writing is the routine I’d most like to take greater hold and that is proving the most difficult to establish real roots, but it is because it is the writing that lives in that purgatory between the poles of work and relaxation. As the time devoted to work grows so does, in equal measure, the time devoted to relaxing and unfortunately I don’t find writing to be an easy part of any day as it requires far too much focus. Relaxation consists primarily of watching sitcoms on Netflix, the sheer banality of which allows my brain to totally dissociate from more important parts of life on the road. My most refreshing activity that I actually have to make a point of limiting myself at is playing Civilization VI. Video games often have a stigma associated with them and playing them can be viewed as time wasted. However, the sheer act of deciding to play even for a few hours reminds me that there is still space in my life for the occasional distraction and that not every second of my waking life needs to feel like I’m tackling some sort of responsibility and staying on top of things.

My morning cup of coffee is the most important ingredient to starting my day with a smile or not. It’s become so important that before my bags are even dropped at a new accommodation I am asking my host what I need to do to arrange a cup of coffee for the morning. I don’t mind going to great lengths to ensure its availability, but I need to take care of it right away to avoid the stress of needing to sort it out the next morning. It’s as if I need to have had my day’s cup of coffee to be able to sort out the next day’s cup of coffee. Along with occasionally having to source my own coffee, I do have to arrange my own meals. I try to limit how often I eat out as this can get quite costly. My first meal is usually between noon and 1pm and this would be the mostly likely time to eat out at a restaurant. Alternatively, most of the major supermarket chains (Morrison’s, Tesco, Lidl, Sainsbury Local, and others) offer a 3-pound meal deal which can get you a sandwich or a pre-made salad with a snack (e.g. a bag of chips) and a drink which is handy in a pinch. I take my suppertime meal a bit more seriously and having the opportunity to self-cater comes in handy. A night time meal is usually a small steak, which is quite good quality and affordable in the UK, with a salad. Strawberries have been in season for the last month and it’s not uncommon for me to polish off a pint in a single sitting. I’m not quite certain how it happened but I’ve also developed a bit of a sweet tooth and several supermarkets offer soft oatmeal cookies for a pound, but Lidl sells stroopwafel  (caramel waffles in England) for a pound-fifty and sometimes that’s a good enough of an excuse to seek out Lidl specifically.

When deciding on where to stay there are several factors to consider and the parallels here to online dating are multifarious. Price is obviously one major consideration and I have my own mental barrier that I have trouble crossing. The goal is to continuously find places who’s daily cost works out to something comparable to what I’ve been paying in rent in Vancouver over the last 3 years. Over the last month I’ve managed this fairly well and have paid more than I normally like to only a few times and each time I find that the value begins to drop off at $70 per night. Location is key when it comes to the algorithm that decides price, but once you hit $70 I find it’s actually more worthwhile to start considering accommodations further outside any city centre. If someone has a pet, this is a huge plus that usually comes at no extra cost. I tend to avoid accommodations that have an extensive list of rigid rules. Trying to book an accommodation that has no previous reviews proves to be more hassle than it is worth, so suddenly reviews have become something I investigate whereas once upon a time this was meaningless to me – a feature that dating apps should consider integrating. Pictures tend to be the least reliable factor when choosing a place to stay that I’ve almost begun to completely disregard them. I have been pleasantly surprised in places where the photos didn’t seem all that intriguing and been thoroughly disappointed when, based on the photos, I believed I’d be waltzing into something luxurious only to realize it was mostly smoke and mirrors and trick lighting. At the end of the day I’ve discovered that I don’t require all that much, but the feeling of being pleasantly surprised far outweighs being slightly disappointed and that usually comes down to having a great host who’s interesting and easy to get along with. At the end of the day you want to be in a place with someone who’s happy that you’re there. Four days is an appropriate amount of time to settle in one place. It affords one the opportunity to not feel overly rushed and have a chance to waste a day if needed, get well enough acquainted with the surroundings, and not feel stuck should the locale or living situation not seem desirable. Moving on daily gets exhausting and longer stays can feel confining.

I cover an average of 15,000 steps per day, but days that go over 25,000 and even 30,000 are not uncommon. A lot of those steps are spent exploring, but a lot are also spent just getting to where I need to go. The one item I brought that disappoints me is my suitcase. After so many years using a backpack I was finally convinced to use a roller – it’s just not me. I feel ridiculous pulling it around, it makes a racket, and I feel like everyone is looking at me. Within a few days I also lost a wheel. It still rolls, but deep down I’m hoping I lose another so I have an excuse to chuck it and get a proper bag. Every other item I brought with me has found a way to serve a purpose and luckily nothing in my bag has simply sat there unused with exception of a couple of adapters who will in short time eventually prove their worth. I was worried that travelling during spring and summer seasons might mean my long pants and long sleeve shirt might go unused, but the complaints about the weather in this part of the world, as I was to learn, are justified.

Considering how many places I’ve visited in the last month I’ve done very little that might be on the tourist brochure and sometimes I worry about leaving a place and not having seen all that there is to see but then I have to remind myself that it’s a lifestyle and that I’m not on vacation. I’ve adapted quickly to my new lifestyle but there are definitely things I miss. Having a space to call one’s own is something that you take for granted until you decide not to have it. I get my privacy and always have a bed, but it never feels like mine. There’s a comfort in the grooves you’ve fashioned in a mattress over the years that hold you just a little bit closer than a stranger’s bed can. I miss my guitars and playing music daily. One day I’ll crack and start travelling with a guitar and maybe playing on street corners and see if I can’t make an extra dime or two. The comforts of home like the people I see regularly I miss but is balanced out by always having someone new to meet, even if it’s not equal. I still treat myself to a visit to the cinema every once in a while. Although there is no longer anything constant in my life, there are still things that happen regularly. And as the sun sets after one month spent on the road, old worries have been replaced with new worries; old doldrums have made way for new excitements; old routines have been replaced by new routines and all the while the one constant being that there are always routines – and there is something comforting in that.