Loops and long days: my weird perception of “day”?

Exams are over!

The first-year lawyers in Cambridge were one of the last to finish their first-year exams and consequently one of the last to start their summer break. At first I thought, this would be an ordeal, the spirit of medieval judicial practice to determine the innocence of their victims. Readers would not be surprised at how we students dramatize the exam process. Even though drama connotes a bit of an exaggeration, I would at the very least be warranted to describe the exam process in an unpleasant manner.

Yet, it was not as bad as I thought. This does not mean that the whole journey (yes, journey not ordeal) was ideal. It certainly was not. But neither was it void of enjoyment. It’s a strange thing to explain, but my personality deems that I should.

My hypothesis

My hypothesis is that the experience of being confined in the same location, repeating the same routine day after day: waking up, studying, watching Netflix for awhile, back to study, playing a couple 3-minute matches of Brawlhalla (duration emphasised for a reason), turn Netflix back on but with more restraint, go back to study reluctantly, meditate, give myself a bit of a pep talk, and end the night with some difficult scholarly article. I sincerely hope that this preamble does not scare away readers, but this is necessary to explain my theory, as well as the very Malaysian analogy below.

In Malaysia, there is this children nursery rhyme that goes “Bagun pagi, gosok gigi, cuci muka, pakai baju, makan roti, minum susu, pergi sekolah, senang hati”. Translation: wake up, brush teeth, wash face, wear clothes, eat bread, drink milk, head to school, ease. The song was written to promote a model morning routine for students. There are other lyrics in the song all relating to a child’s behaviour in school. How does this help my theory?

The analogy is powerful when you consider how songs tend stick in your head if you keep singing them. The memory is especially potent in the case of nursery rhymes, since we sing them from such a young age. Think of a nursery rhyme now. I bet you thought of two already. When you sing the same song in a routine-like manner, you start to accept the lyric as normal and usual. If you are reading this at night, please don’t let it get stuck it your head…

To me, the way the song work encapsulated how my experience of the routine was while I was isolated at home with my main focus being on studies. I got used to the routine as if it was a song. I was well-aware it was a routine, and was in no way some prisoner to it (or else this post would turn into some Stockholm syndrome conspiracy). If anything, I was all too familiar with it. I have been alive for 22 years and 16 of them involved doing important grade-contributing exams twice a year. I did not hate it, was not too fond of it, but did not fight it. Instead, I tolerated it and in the end it became the song that I casually sung in my head.

One long day

I have come across a few blog posts by friends who speak of how life in lockdown feels like a continuous day. I share the same sentiment only with a slight alteration. For reasons mentioned above, the long day feels more like multiple mini cycles taking place. Multiple “routine songs” that I willingly played on repeat.

At this juncture I want to point out that this post was not and never was intended to speak of dread of the lockdown. I opine that there are already plenty of those, and not enough posts giving hope. I hope my “routine song” analogy, a nursery rhyme loved by millions and known by almost every member of the Malaysian (and maybe Singaporean) communities. It’s a song that started the morning right, and one should always treasure his mornings.

In fact, if a reader would want to be meticulous, they would point out that the nursery rhyme only applies to one part of the day (morning), while my routine lasts the entire day. But that is exactly the point. The difference peters out. And I am left with one long day of multiple loops of “routine”, albeit loops that I am aware of myself and have willingly chose to allow.

If you stop reading here you might conclude this post as one promoting good habits. You would not be wrong, that is indeed one of my purposes, but it is not all. You would start to see how this post builds on the analogy of my friends’ opinion that their time in lockdown feels like a single continuous day even though it constituted multiple. Coincidentally, I realised as I was writing this post that today is the 100th day since Malaysia went on lockdown. 100 days. Stop and ponder. Did it feel like that? Did it feel like a 100 days?

Remembering the falsettos

If there was let’s say an intervening high note in the song in the “routine song” I mentioned earlier, a falsetto (It is up to you how on-pitch you want that falsetto to be). You would surely notice it, and notice it more for those of you conjuring in your mind a horrible singer.

Whatever the quality of the singer’s output, her note enhanced the song in some way. It did not change the songs meaning as the lyrics were unchanged. However, you would remember that falsetto.

Drawing that analogy to reality, in my experience of routine in isolation, there were some days where I chose to depart from that routine. Willingly. There was a day where I spent the whole day watching Netflix (confession is out), another day where I cooked steaks for the family, and a third where I went out to a nearby café to get a drink and play some games with good friends. Honestly, these three memories are the clearest things on my mind. They bear no relation to one another. They were not proximate in date or purpose. Their only similarity was their randomness. Intervening events outside the loop.

These events separated the continuous day into sections. For example, I would now candidly describe these sections as “before I spent the whole day watching Netflix”, “after I spent the whole day watching Netflix”, “some weeks after cooking steaks”, “some days after we gamed at the café”. I have lost track of the individual days (save in the case of important events of course which I do note in a calendar, but this is an issue or active organisation that is outside my current purposes for writing). Going back to my point, these events become signposts for my memories. To some extent, I predict that this happens to all of us, whether it be due to many things going on in life to poor memory in general.

Is this blog just a longwinded ploy to lead me to that cliché Cesare Pavese quote: “We do not remember days, we remember moments”? Yet, but my hypothesis takes this argument further. It is that the effect of perceiving a time interval as one continuous day has resulted in us only able to remember moments.

The loop effect

But what about the loops? In the last three paragraphs I was simply talking about a phenomenon of my mind that cut a continuous day into sections. What does that have to do with a falsetto in the middle of a “routine song”, an intervening falsetto, so to speak.

Because I have gotten so used to those repeated routines that are not partitioned by days, I feel a sense of normal when moving round the spin of the same loop each day. It has made me feel a bit strange when I’m not performing the same routine, or at least a rough equivalence of it (such as exchanging 1 hour of Brawlhalla time for 1 hour of scribbl.io).

For clarity I should also share a bit of my work ethic here. I believe that work should be enjoyable and integrated within the day in a way which does not feel forced. To some extent I have succeeded. To a further extent I sometimes create productivity vacuums, which suck me into them. It has made it more difficult to rest unless that rest falls within a schedule. My work ethic is far from infallible but the information I have revealed is enough for you to get a depiction of what my routine song looks like.

But is this all bad? Well, I have completed by exams and no longer have a moral responsibility to partake in it (for a few months). I also have been doing a lot of different things which may make for more continuous day cuts. Yet, the pull of the loop, the motivation of routine, still calls. It’s a challenge to not fall for the productivity trap (more on that in a future post), but I indeed want to harness its momentum.

Summary

For a summary, to help clarify to those of you who stayed through the end and willingly took on the journey of treading through the thorny patches of mind, two observations I would highlight and encourage you to observe in your own life:

1. It is the moments that divide our days, and prevent us from feeling a continuous day. Being isolated at home itself may not have been the problem, rather the lack of “out-of-the-ordinary” opportunities it caused.

2. Routines create momentum, and the benefits of the momentum are worth its “routine song’ being stuck in your head.

Caveat

At the end of the day please take this all with a pinch of salt. Take it solely for muse even if you want to. I am not a psychology expert. This post is mostly conjecture and some facts by mere consensus. I am merely an observer and want to share what I observe. Now posting a blog has sliced by continuous day once more, and I am grateful to have the memory to say so.