Far From Routine

My mornings are off - way off. It has to do with my hair. No, not really. My hair is fine - for now. It has to do with when I comb my hair - not how I comb it. I have changed that sacred cow, my morning routine.

For most if not all of my life, at least for as much as my life I have so far lived, my morning routine was this: shower, dress, comb, brush and shave. I could do it in my sleep and I often did. But now the vagaries of the layout of my new house have changed the order to shower, comb, brush, dress and shave. And it is not working.

The shower part is still front end loaded so I am doing pretty well with that. I am clean. And the hair part works well theoretically because by combing right after my shower my hair is still wet and manageable (as in silky smooth.) It used to dry when I was dressing and do whatever it wanted. So my new routine should be better.

However, I have this problem with advanced age and I often forget to comb. I find myself getting dressed with a wet head and fretting over the results. Why do I fret? It was OK to do it that way for many years, but now that I have a new improved method, it is suddenly no longer okay. I do not understand.

The new position for brushing in the batting order is working very well. I find that standing half naked in a steam filled room encourages lingering, so my frequency of flossing has increased. Is that more than you wanted to know?

Shaving is a big problem. It is the only thing left to do after I dress and I forget to do it. It is now two days in a row that I am running around with stubble which only I can see. If I had a heavier beard everyone would think that I was in style like all of the famous athletes and movie stars.

I am thinking about hiring a coach or a management consultant to help me with this problem. There must be a solution! There must be a winning strategy! A systems analyst should be able to bundle these activities into a cohesive and predictable force.

But I am not going to do that because those would be old school answers. The books which I have been reading lately are telling me to get rid of my winning strategies, that they are limiting me, and to embrace the impossible. Or something like that. Make the impossible my possibility! That’s better.

But how will I get the floss and toothpaste off my wet clothes?