Anything But Routine

By this time into the year, habit has crept in enough for me to write the correct year on checks. Now when I say ‘twenty ten” it no longer sounds like some totally new word I am a bit apprehensive to say in case I mispronounce it. While the year is still new, right now it is losing some of it’s sparkly shine, some of it’s new car smell. The promise and hope that the turning of a calendar page brings still lurks nearby but without much notice or effort it is blending into the space occupied by peripheral vision.

This makes me consider how the end of one year and the start of another sometimes seems like a place where the day-to-day world forgets briefly. Holiday festivities seemingly stretch across every aspect of life, personal and otherwise, and even stretch out for weeks. Neighbors you barely know smile and wave when you see them, co-workers want to have potluck lunches and you just want to grab the hand of someone near you and break out into a verse of “I’d Like To Teach the World To Sing”. Overall, people seem to ease up a bit and breathe easier. Then comes the new year. What follows in the background of life for a short time then is a slow motion sprint to get back to the place you were before the season really started.

That change of pace the holidays bring often seems so well-timed. It’s a breath of cool, fresh air when the room has grown stale and stuffy. It’s a quick stretching of the legs after sitting for a long time. It’s the refresh button on a web browser.

In time things eventually do get back into a rhythm. Despite the needed change, comfort often comes in the routine, the every day. While now and then things need to be shaken up, it seems it’s the everyday things that keep things grounded. It’s the cup of coffee with a drop of dairy stirred slowly four times before the first sip. It’s three minutes of calm at the end of the day in the easy chair before everyone else gets home. It’s the knowing without thought how far up the wall to reach in the dark to find the light switch.

This whole idea came into focus recently, as I was driving to work and I found myself subconsciously guiding my car between two shingles that apparently flew off a truck at some point last summer and via time and heat and traffic had become affixed to the pavement. As I did this it dawned on me that I had done this before. Although my routine had been broken now that things were getting back to normal I realized that every day if I am in that lane of the road at that particular place I subtly slide my car into the turning lane a few feet so my wheels can avoid running over those shingles and then slide the car back into the proper lane.

As I continued my drive that day I felt a certain appreciation in the same ol', same ol', in the everyday. Soon enough, I'll need that breath of fresh air but for now, the comfortable place where I find the routine seems like a good place to be.