Overcoming the Hurdle of Habit in Adjusting to Life's Changes

What too-tight pants and ill-fitting work routines have in common

For the past few years, I’ve procrastinated about getting new pants. Not different pants, necessarily. I still like the same styles. But roomier ones that don’t require tightening my abs or holding my breath to snap or button them.

Twice during annual sales, I begrudgingly purchased a pair of my usual workday pants in a bigger size. Yet most of the week, particularly when they were fresh out of the wash, my other too-snug pants reminded me of their presence each time I crouched, bent, or tucked in a shirt (or left it untucked). I told myself that my wider waist was temporary. What if I bought new pants, then trimmed back down and needed a slimmer size again? What a waste of money.

Then last month, one of my favorite stores offered the deepest discounts I can recall. I’d just received my pay for being an election worker and the first third of my annual stipend for an extra role at school; together, around $600. I spent a sizeable chunk on Christmas gifts, but I also bought bigger pants—for work and play.

The next week, what I noticed most about my new pants was how little I noticed them. They were just there keeping me covered, warm, and comfy, pleasing me with their abundant pockets, and not leaving a red band around my middle. Pants that fit. Why had I been so stubborn?

A pair of my roomier pants for play - rolled up on the river and rolled down for warming up once I got back home. The river was running springtime quick yesterday with a strong headwind, so I tucked against a fallen tree for a break.

My work routines suffer from similar stubbornness, constricting not because they must be, but because I haven’t adjusted to changes in my body, priorities, or rhythms. Like my pants, I don’t need different work, at least not yet, but I could wear the hours in ways that fit today’s me better.

Here are three realignments in progress.

Shortly after I turned 50, intermittent hip pain emerged in both my hips. Delightful. Thankfully, a physical therapist taught me to manage the pain with 25 to 30 minutes of morning stretching and exercise. This prevents my hips from screaming (which they resume whenever I slack off), but it cuts into a practice that roots my day in joy: writing in the morning when my creativity flows most freely. Abbreviating that time leaves me restless and edgy, and some days, even a bit grumpy.

Getting up earlier isn’t the solution. Before the pandemic, I’d already started setting my alarm earlier so I could meditate, something that heightens my present-moment awareness and strengthens my focus. Any earlier and my alarm would go off at 4-something, meaning less time with Annette the night before if I’d also like to sleep for seven hours, which I do.

Instead, I could leave for school later and still arrive on time. Sounds simple enough. But I’m someone who arrives early at almost everything. Always have. Since getting my new pants, I’ve tried on this roomier morning routine a few times and it felt . . . like holding my breath. Loosening my attachment to this “early girl” identity is harder than I expected. Hopefully, if I repeat this shift with more regularity in January, I’ll learn to exhale into it, reclaiming more writing time and through it, more joy.

Lunch deserves recalibration too. For decades, I’ve squeezed in 10 or 15 minutes at my desk, sometimes working while I munch. Physically, this suffices, but it squanders an opportunity to connect with colleagues, something that could enhance my sense of belonging and deepen my understanding of how to best serve my school community.

Even though the library’s too busy during the students’ lunch period for me to join teachers who eat then, some with planning immediately afterward are interested in meeting up. On days I don’t teach during that block, I plan to say yes to that.

The third worktime habit I’m reexamining is my miserly approach to personal leave. Usually, I cache two of these three days like seeds to help weather some future harsh winter, earn an extra day by proctoring admissions testing, then cache that too. Occasionally, I schedule a day off for Annette’s birthday or mine, but mostly I save them. Once I reach the accrual cap, they turn into sick leave. I’m frugal with that too.

This year, for the first time, I’m emptying my cache of personal leave to join Annette on a special trip. It feels risky—and exhilarating. I’ve held this leave so tightly for so long that she couldn’t quite believe I’d submitted the leave request until my supervisor approved it.

Next fall, as we settle into the new rhythm of Annette being retired while I continue working, I plan to don future personal leave more like a cape than a snowsuit, to be less Grinchy with it and more like the Whos down in Whoville ringing their jingtinglers. The forecast for 2025-2026? At least two long weekends, maybe three.

Pants that fit. Work habits calibrated for more creativity, connection, and joy, and a couple more play days with my wonderful wife. Why did I wait? Was it pride? denial? frugality? worry? the deep snow tracks of that’s-how-I’ve-always-done-it? Yes, to all of that, and probably more.

There’s one item I haven’t checked off my list of pants: festive fleece pajama pants, perhaps featuring penguins. I missed participating in the winter holidays pajama day this year because I’d given away the pajamas I’d outgrown and forgotten to buy new ones. This goofy day provides much-needed silliness and stress relief for students during the last week before winter break, which is also the end of a grading quarter. One physics teacher dresses up every day that week—as a snowman, elf, etc. Each time I run into him in the hall, I smile. Students do too. Next December, I’ll be ready.

Unlike pants, time is one size fits all. What I can choose is how to wear it. When I look at my watch in 2025, let me picture a compass, considering whether what I’m about to do with my time propels me in the direction I’d like to go.

Happy New Year! May your pants fit, and time bring you more joy than sorrow.

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Here’s a poem for your pocket until the next post, one I hope will spark a smile as if you’ve just seen a physics teacher in a bright green elf suit. This one’s a video (2 minutes, 25 seconds) of poet Sharon Olds reading her poem “Self Portrait, Rear View” at HBO’s Def Poetry Jam back in the 2000’s.

As a bonus, here are two resources for your new year, particularly the remaining winter months. The first is a series that Annette just wrapped up called Thirty Days of Hope. I especially appreciated the last two posts—one a retrospective on the past 25 years, the other an anticipation of the next 25. The second resource may help keep the flames of your wonder burning bright during the longer nights. It’s a book of devotions called All Creation Waits that I learned about in a post about winter survival and Advent by Maj-Britt. Read her post or the book to learn about the “treasure map” of cached seeds that chickadees memorize to help them survive the season.

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