The Floor

When life falls apart, I have four things: reading, writing, running, lifting. That's the whole list. They're not a system. They're the floor — things I've done since I was a kid that fit into any schedule, no matter how wrecked, and keep me grounded when everything else is in motion.

There's such a thing as a season of life, and the earlier you learn it, the easier everything gets. Family and circumstances beyond your control will force you to shift your focus and adapt, temporarily, whether you've consented to it or not. Changes in home schedules, career demands that ebb and flow, kids growing up — these are seasons. If you have a partner, they have their own seasons running alongside yours. The combination is unique to your household, and it never holds still.

Which is why the experts who tell you the answer is in one book, one philosophy, one view have it backwards. Your life is too specific for a single framework to fit it. But the lesson underneath the frameworks is universal: keep a floor. Not a system, not a philosophy — a short list of things that work for you, that survive contact with chaos, that you return to when there's no room for anything else.

For me, it's those four. For you, the list might look nothing like mine, and if you can't fit any of it in, then go outside and walk — no music, no distractions, just walk. The point isn't the items. The point is that you have them. Sometimes life pushes you to the point where, beyond your responsibilities to family and career, you’re holding on to one or two things and nothing more.

The floor is rigid on purpose. That's what makes it a floor. Everything above it bends — the goals, the routines, the ambitions all flex with the season. The floor doesn't. And when the season passes, you build back up from it.

Absolute rigidity isn't a way of living. But neither is having nothing solid under your feet.