On being a creature of habit: How I’m learning to accept that my simple routines are the backbone of my happiness

I got back home last week after five days in Lisbon for a friend’s wedding. It was a beautiful time. I feel really lucky to have done a lot of travelling this year—in fact, if you’d told twenty-year-old me that I’d one day have the ability to travel as much as I did in 2023, she probably would have passed out from joy.

But something new happened this year, too: for the first time ever during my travels, I was so, so excited to go home.

In all of the chaos that I’ve lived through in the past four years—the pandemic, cancer, moving, marriage, job changes—I’ve really had to learn what I can lean on to find some stability, some sense of calm in the wilderness that I (and everyone else, in their own personal ways) was navigating. I’ve always had homebody tendencies, but it was through this maelstrom that I really started to come to understand why I’m such a homebody. 

Well—the maelstrom and therapy, if we’re being honest.

And the truth of it is that I’m someone for whom routines are vitally important. This isn’t groundbreaking—just look at the influx of YouTube videos and TikToks about morning routines and five-to-nines and evening wind-downs. I’m just not sure why it took me so long to accept that routines are such a vital part of my life. Whatever it is, it’s taken me a long time to actually accept that routine is a foundational piece of my peace of mind.

All of which brings us back to here: my changing attitudes towards travel.

One of my favourite places in the world is a small village in Eastern Crete, built into the base of the Ha Gorge. Unimaginably sheer cliffs stand at its back, and the Ierapetra Plains unfurl ahead of it, dotted with olive groves as they race towards the sea. At one point, this village had all of one permanent residents, though now a few of its medieval stone houses have been renovated and a really excellent tavern has opened up at its peak.

Some photos from the village in question.

I first went there as an archaeology student, after a summer of digging at the nearby Minoan site of Gournia. We went as a team to celebrate the end of the season, and I fell in love. We ate overlooking the valley and the setting sun and I remember trying to fend off feelings of impending doom that the summer was ending. A couple weeks later, I sobbed on the airplane as it left Greece and I was forced to go home.

That’s always been my feeling towards travel—that I never, ever wanted it to end. I’ve had that feeling of impending doom in countries on three different continents. I’d accepted it as a standard process of travelling.

But something shifted this year. Near the end of the trips I took this year, I was really goddamn excited to go home.

This shift comes around naturally: learning to lean on routines during the aforementioned insanity of the past few years; being in a life and home that I don’t want to run away from; recognizing how I have seasons of activity and seasons of rest. All these factors have been slowly shifting how I live my life at home, how I give myself space. But experiencing that while travelling was new—for the first time in my life, I was looking forward to going home and getting back into my routines.

It’s funny that something that can be so obvious in retrospect (of course I love being at home, it’s my favourite) can also be so jarring in the moment (what do you mean, I want to go home?). But travelling this year was such an eye-opening experience for me, a reminder of the value I put on having a comfortable home and quiet and structure to my days. It’s about knowing thyself, I guess. 

It bears noting that none of this means I don’t want to travel anymore. The list of places I want to go is as long as my arm, and it won’t be long before I’m on a plane again. But having this self-knowledge means planning even better trips: embracing slow travel more, staying longer in a single place, digging in deep to a new spot instead of trying to hit every must-see location. 

It also reinforces what I need to do at home to set myself up for success—I’ve known that routines are important, but now I feel empowered to prioritise them even further for myself. I’ve also been mulling over how I can build more healthful habits into those routines. Winter is coming, so if ever there was a time to explore more physically, emotionally, and spiritually healthy habits, it would be now.

I’m lucky to be on holiday from work until mid-November, so that is what I would like to spend the next few weeks exploring. I’m sure I’ll be sharing thoughts here soon, but I’d love to hear from you, too: what habits and routines keep you going through the dark, cold months? What do you prioritise?

Until next time.