When your routine is interrupted

Today is the day!

I am finally ready to pull my notes together and crack on with chapter four.

I get to the coffee shop—as I do on Saturday—lift my computer out of my bag and look for the notes I am sure I packed just a half hour ago.

Nothing. Just some hand santizer, a face mask and an assortment of writing implements.

What do you do when you get thrown? What if what you thought was going to happen just doesn’t? Sure, not bringing my notes down the street is pretty small in the unexpectedness of research. But what if it’s something much bigger?

The nature of research is that you can’t fully anticipate where it will lead. My supervisor reminds me that ‘if you knew the answers, you wouldn’t need to research’. I begrudgingly agree to the truth of his words. I like pretending I’m in control.

Rolling with the unexpected is okay when you are hoping for the unexpected. That’s when the research is fun. You’re looking for new things, noticing patterns, and exploring unusual ideas. You’ve entered a playground and are busy playing.

But I really want the answers to be on the slide, not the flying-fox. I have no upper body strength and am likely to fall if relying on my arms. Then, depending on who is watching, I’ll have to pretend to be brave and go again.

Today unexpectedness isn’t that. I’ve fallen off the flying-fox enough to get used to the bruises, especially that time I tangled myself in confirmation bias and argued myself out of my thesis.

Today is about something much smaller and not letting it build into something big.

So I forgot my notes. Okay. I can write a blog post instead. Then maybe I’ll get online and see what poetry I can submit for publication, or even see if there is an article I feel like writing. I might even write some poetry just for fun (there’s a thought!). And when I get home, I’ll get my notes out and reignite the impulse to work on chapter four.

Most of the time the unexpected isn’t a catastrophe. It’s just unexpected. Control freaks—aka almost every human on the face of the earth—hate the unexpected. We like feeling in control. And some degree of control is important for our wellbeing but learning to accept that there are things that are simply out of our control, this is where peace comes from. When I don’t need everything to be perfect and to happen as I imagine it should, then I find the freedom to enjoy what is happening.

The research won’t stop just because I forgot my notes.

Time to write some poetry.