The pros and cons of regimenting my time

I am very much a creature of habit. I fall very easily into patterns and follow them like I'm on rails. Sometimes this can be a very good thing for me. When I was in undergrad, getting up at 7:45AM every day to get to the gym by 8 to work out for exactly thirty minutes, take a ten-minute shower, then dress and get to class by 9, I did it every damn day but Sunday. It was my routine, my pattern, and once I was in the groove I followed it determinedly. I get chores done on a regular basis because I keep the same schedule for them week after week. When it works, it works for me. Unfortunately, tough as it is to knock me out of a habit, once I'm out, I am out. A new habit is formed of living absent the old behavior and that becomes equally difficult to break.

Sometimes I think I need to put myself on schedules for more things. I have never really had a bedtime routine, for example. I am familiar from television that apparently normal people wash their faces and brush their teeth and suchlike before they go to sleep, but I frankly crash so hard when I get tired I pretty much just collapse, especially lately. Doesn't leave a ton of time to "prepare" for bed. It's a good thing I don't wear makeup or have contacts, because I'd go to bed with them still on so often that I'd spend my life as a keratitis-plagued acne-crusted pig. I sleep in my clothes on top of my still-made bed probably more often than anyone that doesn't have alcoholic blackouts.

Now that I've convinced you that I'm a slovenly piggy who can't handle basic tasks of self-care, I bring this up because I wonder if forcing myself into a greater level of routine would help me do more of the things I want to get done. Not just stuff like taking better care of my skin, but going back to regular workouts, blocking off time to write, to sew, to practice ballet. Because I know that getting into habits enables me to do those things. There are so many things I want to do, and I feel like so often I waste the time I have to do them because my time is not regimented well enough. I hate that feeling of having enough time to do the things that feel enriching but not using it.

The flipside of that is that I'm a bit afraid of locking myself into too many routines. I know how much I come to sink into them and depend on them. I can see myself losing what spontaneity I'm already inclined, little enough as it is. Or stressing myself out even more trying to stick to it. I suppose I could try it, and if I don't feel better for having done it, I can always retreat into laziness to break the habit.