This article is part of in troubled times — what we can learn about it from history and personal experiences. I was laid off in December. I can’t say I wasn’t anticipating it. Everything was falling apart everywhere, including the media world. But when it happened, the first thing I worried about — before questions of how I’d make money or what I’d do about insurance — was if I’d lose the routine that I had developed, lost, and then worked so hard to get back. We all had our routines before the pandemic, and so many of them were upended. Just about any personal routine, if it wasn’t halted outright, changed somehow, from the mundane to the essential. The older man I used to see slowly savoring an espresso every day at the coffee shop had to take it in a to-go cup and drink it outside. Until lockdown, a friend had gone uptown to see his parents every Sunday morning, but had to stop. Children stopped going to school and much of the work force stopped going to offices. Trying to maintain a routine was difficult enough with the world feeling as if it was going to pieces; trying to set new ones without any clear indication of what the future held felt downright impossible.