I cannot tell if this is a rut or the good life. Everything seems OK. Nobody is throwing any rocks at me. The bills are paid, more or less. My bike is still relatively new. The A.C. works. No, I guess it is not a rut, it is a routine. Same thing, damn near every day. There is really no need to complain. I'm eating well. Reading good books. Cracking different versions of the same jokes with the same friends I've had for about 15 years. I still laugh most of the time.Still, at the edge of my mind's eye I see something shifting, restless.
I tried to make a bedroom the living room, and the living room a combination dance floor, repair shop, but the couch got stuck in the hall. I almost took an axe to it to get it out of there.
I could start working all night and sleeping all day. I could wear my pants backwards, eat breakfast for dinner, dinner for breakfast, and lunch on the roof. That might help.
The problem is that the routine was the goal. To get out of the melee and lead a somewhat more predictable life is nice, as anyone who has been blindsided one too many times can tell you.
You know, some groceries in the fridge. Sheets on the bed. Middle class stuff.
This summer may be the time to write a book, or at least an essay or two. I could break out the acrylics and paint more janitors on llamas. Get a tattoo. Carve a moustache. Learn an actual finished song or two on guitar. Start a hot sauce company. Start wearing underwear. Anything to shake things up.
I want something BIG to happen. Famous last words.
Wapner, four-thirty!
Juancho
10 comments:
I'm also trying to learn to enjoy this phase in my life to that you described so well. Most of my life I have been so addicted to drama and think that routines, once I found out what they were, are a sign of death in one form or another.
But when the drama seems that it will last forever, I crave routine. I get better at longer stretches of when one day looks pretty much like that previous one. I wish you luck to.
Gives new meaning to "it's about the journey, not the destination." See how boring it is once you arrive?
I'm there too, man. Family life and job impose the routine for me. But even riding the same trail too often can grate. Sunday I rode Munson from home and welcomed the threatening clouds, then the challenge of making it home through scattered thunderstorms. Sat out the deluges, first in a baseball dugout at a field where a lone kid was playing hit and retrieve, then a picnic shelter, and finally the carport of an unoccupied house for rent.
Sometimes things get so stale I even welcome a flat tire -- bike or car, I don't care.
Now there's an idea.
(the hucking bike).
Ah yes, to be foot loose and fancy free. Could head back out west or even to another continent if the whim struck. And yet, Young Juancho, you have glimpsed wisdom that most people obtain only after they add spouse, kids and mortgage payments to their picture, and that is;
Routine = Freedom.
Ironic but true.
the routine frees you
to experiment
outside the realm of
the routine
but don't start wearing underwear
Nature itself abhors routine. It's hot, it's red and gold, it's cold, it's green and perfect, it's hot, but not as hot as last time, it's less gold but more red, it's cold enough to kill all the oranges, it's a rainy spring, it's hot with many, many hurricanes. Any routine that lasts more than about four months is a fruitless protest against death.
So road bike season is alomst over??
Bored, huh?? Any takers to hop into Barbie's Little Dream Truck with Juancho's Mom for a drive the Yucatan with Louie the dog-who-can't-fly-there-because-of-the-heat?
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