What's Your Bedtime Routine?

Sometimes I start conversations in the middle, without warning. Like now.

So what IS your bedtime routine? I always feel more well-adjusted, more content, more at ease when I have routine. Then, I inevitably tire of it and shake it up. But the point is, it's there to be shaken. Much better to be there and be shaken, then to not be there at all.

I'm not one for elaborate routines. Too Type A. Some days, it's a triumph simply to brush my teeth before hitting the proverbial hay. I don't have seventy different bottles of face goo; I don't say any rosaries or read a chapter in a proscribed book club book.

But when I do take a little time, I feel better. About everything. Life. The universe. Politics. Dog hair.

Especially the dog hair.

Some people aren't like clockwork; they are clockwork. They're made as minutely as Swiss watches, so you can - proverbially, of course - set your watch by them. I once watched a man search for five minutes for a particular spoon with which to stir his tea.

But if I were a clock, you'd never know what time it was. Sometimes I'd be accurate, sometimes my hands would be swinging around my face doing a chronological tango, sometimes I'd forget to wind myself, and sometimes I'd develop existential timepiece angst and trot off to explore the world; probably Paris.

In the world, there are people who are clocks, and people who always need a clock; these people are never the same people, and often, they annoy each other greatly. People who are clocks think the world revolves around seconds and milliseconds; they think punctuality is next to godliness, that details aren't part of life, they are life, and that linear equations are better than sex. People who always need a clock have worlds that spin internally that people who are clocks never see; time is punctuated, not by chimes in a hall, but by the moment inspiration hits, or the feeling of exhilaration or despair that marks one point in time as different from the next. They think creativity is next to godliness, that flexibility isn't part of life, it is life, and that linear equations will never compare to sex.

Interestingly enough, people who always need a clock often enjoy tangible, outward cues to their inward musings, their invisible worlds. Why do I need routine? Well, it gives comfort, and order, to my rather spontaneous inner world. Why do I need a clock? Because driving down the road, I don't notice what speed I'm going, I notice a stone fence, and imagine faeries who live in it, and who slumber all year, except for one day, when they emerge to have a grand dragonfly race (which happens to coincide with the Kentucky Derby). That's why I need a clock.

And a bedtime routine.