I struggle to make my bed every morning, and usually end up getting distracted by something else, first thing after waking up. The impulse to write down every thought flowing down my stream of consciousness, the urge to cry, the ring of an alarm I hate. These days, I’ve been putting my legs up against my wall for about ten minutes – something about it lowering stress, and feeling ridiculous. Looking up at the off-white colour of my ceiling and emptying that useless brain of mine, hoping the stress I usually feel in the morning dissipates soon enough. Ten minutes is a long time for someone whose fingers itch with the desire to grab a phone or a book – the former one being the most likely option of two, considering I hate reading when laying down.
I struggle to make my bed every morning, because I never saw a purpose to it. I have better things to do, even when I don’t. I promise myself I will do it tomorrow, and then I don’t.
I hate that I begin each day with a vague sense of disappointment and discouragement – then I distract myself with something less repetitive, more fun, and forget about the room I’ve left behind, books and clothes on the floor, a poster I bought three years ago still not up on my wall, and a calculator and notebook I sleep with forever perched on my second, grey pillow. You’d find everything you’d expect to find in this room, and none of the trinkets on my shelves would surprise anyone. It is something contradictory and in my image: scattered, colourful, weirdly ordinary and unexpectedly mundane.
Mechanical and predictable gestures tend to bore me, and maybe it is why I struggle to make my bed. I do not like to brush my teeth although I love the taste of my toothpaste, nor do I like my skincare – even when I spend a ridiculous amount of time researching and elaborating it. I do not like eating the same breakfast at the same time every day. I didn’t like dancing classes every Tuesday evening. But I love listening to one specific song on repeat for ten days until I get bored of it – and everyone calls me crazy. I like soups for every meal, but only if it’s tomato. I like playing the kalimba once in a while, only when I feel like it, and I don’t really care that I am not getting better.
There’s a push and pull in my heart and habits that doesn’t explain itself. Motivation doesn’t come as easy as I’ve always thought it would, especially these past months. I blamed it on fatigue a lot and the cluelessness that comes with looking for a first job, of having nothing to do all day but force myself to rewrite the same cover letters, to send ten more emails by the end of the afternoon, to peel through LinkedIn posts and wonder how my former classmates are doing. Then I blamed it on the stars and the misaligned planets; then I blamed it on me. Why can’t I bring myself to make this goddamn bed?
I thought it would be easier to keep my room in order when I moved to Seoul. The bed was smaller, the mattress hurt my back, and I had no pillow for a while. Nothing there to make, really. I had a desk, a lamp, and a clothing rack. No bedside table, and I put my glasses on the floor to sleep. The less stuff I had brought, the easier it would be to stay organised, I figured. And yet, I still didn’t succeed in making a habit out of making my bed.
It’s a particularly unfunny kind of joke, I guess, that not being able to do a simple task like this reflects my inability to plan a day ahead – and that I wish I could, but somehow don’t manage to. I want to be a list person, and I love the idea of stickers, but they bore me once the newness of the activity rubbed off. I never revisit my calendars or my yearly plannings past February, and that is if I’m lucky not to have given up by January 3rd. I’d like to get better at new crafts I’ve seen on social media, but I forget about it as soon as a new Michael Schur show drops on any streaming platform. So I guess it is no surprise that I’ve always told myself I’d never be able to do anything consistently – how could I make anything stick to the poster-less walls of my room if I kept forgetting to buy tape?
These days, I dream of a new room in which no one can step in. Just mine, with colours, and small lights, and big windows, and a carpet that makes me sneeze. With a bed so big I can stretch my arms without meeting any edge, in which I will never lay with my “outside” clothes on. With an old player I will find in a thrift shop and one of my grandpa’s typewriters on a desk I never sit at. With plants I will have to learn how to take care of, all gifted by my friends even if they live miles away. A new room no one will see, with a pile of books I haven’t read, and the smell of peaches and honey. In a city I’ve never lived in, crossing bridges I’ve never crossed, and breaking patterns I’ve never broken. Maybe in this room, I’ll stop struggling to make my bed.
Whether I make it or not, I will have to lie in it anyway.
andstillwedream 