Frank's Diary: Routine and Repetition Save Me!

Entry #2: A brief, transitional funk that hasn't changed the music I love.

Jun 18, 2025

I love repetition. I love redundancy. I love repetition. I love redundancy. I love repetition. I love redundancy. I love repetition. I love redundancy.

Can you tell?

I loved an 8:07 am alarm every weekday morning that gave me 23 extra minutes to sit in bed on my phone.

I loved knowing there was a class I had to be at in 20 minutes; it fueled my urgency. It was a place where I could deliver.

I loved a night shower. I loved washing my hair every time because I don’t actually care what people say. I loved the reactions of telling people I wash my hair everyday like yes, be afraid of my silky smooth delicious-smelling locks.

(Disclaimer: I know this isn’t an “agenda,” and it is a real phenomenon. My practices are ill-advised and are not to be taken as advice. Still, I’m gonna wash it every night though, xoxo!)

I loved roommate dinner Wednesday night, a walk with no destination Wednesday afternoons, and the nothingness of the mornings. I really, REALLY loved Wednesdays.

My hometown Wednesday walk searching for Wednesday whimsy.

I loved 10 pm joints before lying in my twin-sized mattress that I’m just too tall for. I loved getting up 20 minutes later to eat peanut butter and ice cream from the jar. I loved telling myself, “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,” and the bridge was just my stomach begging for a carrot and a drop of water the following morning on the F-train.

I loved whenever I went into antique stores and would look strictly for sharp objects and things that resembled teeth. I like how I would go to antique shops to begin with. I like how I never bought anything. Antiquing was always hard for me—all the stores I know are so charming, and I could never quite judge if the artifacts were something I liked or if it was only beautiful because of their surroundings.

I’m writing this on the 18th of June, a month and two days after my college graduation. I’ve always loved repetition (have I mentioned this yet?) because it ensures, without question, that whatever I’ve heard, seen, tasted, smelled will soon whip back around like a carousel of 100% guarantee.

A week ago, I wrote in my notes app that “I’m a creature of comfort, burdened by ambition without a work ethic.” I could have just said I’m petrified of change and unemployed, but self-indulgently, it was kind of a bar and I felt an obligation to share.

Post-grad excitement was so palpable before I graduated because it was…well…before graduation. There was a repetitive nature, expectations of myself to be places for people, work to attend to, things to sleep for, and alarms not to miss. All these moments, though at times a pain, I knew I loved because I had done them a thousand times over.

I sit at the dining room table of my childhood home as I write this. I’ve been here millions of times. It’s the pinnacle of repetition, though now it’s more nostalgia of what used to be a routine. I didn’t smoke a joint last night, I didn’t raw-dog the jar of Jif crunchy peanut butter in my cabinet, and Wednesdays are like Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.

I love repetition, but in its absence, I’ve found what a daunting thing it is to rebuild. What I can say, for my own comfort and hopefully for all 24 other readers of mine, is if I’ve built such a cycle before, who’s to say two times over is so crazy? As I type this, I’m not even sure that I believe that I can do it yet, but if I repeat it a couple more times, maybe it’ll sit prettier in my head.

With this free time, as most do, I’ve become a D1 scroller. I scroll TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, an easy routine to build, especially, perhaps paradoxically, because there is something new to see every damn time. I also listen to a ton of music (fork found in kitchen) though, that one part of Spotify, the “On Repeat” playlist that they curate, tends to stick solid as stone. Unmoved, untouched, the same.

This week, our theme isn’t genre. It’s not geo-location, tempo, contents, songwriting, songwriters, or rappers. This week, I’m sharing the routine I didn’t even mean to set. In this transition, I hear these songs and feel encouraged by routine, by repetition, by redundancy—all things that, yes, shocker, I really do love.