Time for a Change

So it has come to my attention that things have been slipping of late. That's not entirely unusual, I have often 'come to' in time to see certain aspects of my life implode. More often than not, I wake up in time to hold off disaster once more.

I'm not exactly sure what happens after that. I patch holes, rework strategies, set things in motion so that they are relatively self-sustaining, and then... Well, as I mentioned, I'm not really sure. Habits I suppose, or maintenance. Zombie-mode maybe. It's like going to sleep, and having a dream about your life. It's not a very good dream- most of it is boring bits punctuated by short bursts of frenzy, and it all seems very distant.

I go through these changes from time to time. I drift off while living my life for months or years at a time, never really aware of the exact nodding off point. But, much like a long drive in the middle of the night, I hear or think I see something, and suddenly realize that I have not been paying attention. At all.

And that realization, the smack of awareness that I have been doing something incredibly dangerous while paying no attention, scares the crap out of me. These aren't little things, like walking to the corner store or standing in line, but Big Things, like my career, my hobbies, my circle of friends, my screeching hunk of metal hurtling down the asphalt at a hundred and forty.

One would think that there would a naturally occurring enzyme or protein in my brain, some evolutionary device that instinctively perceived the amount of potential danger and kick itself in. Reserve bandwidth, an Attention Getting Device, something.

If a rock flies towards my face, I flinch. My body has preemptively decided that the stuff on my face is important and turns to avoid it. It would be nice to have a flinch for potentially dangerous life situations. If every time you slacked a bit at work, you suddenly stood up straight with a yelp. Or when making nice to someone you have a bad feeling about, you involuntarily grabbed and sneezed into their hand. Something that made the situation obvious.

As it is, nothing happens until one is on the brink of disaster. I suppose there is a flinch after all. The 'holy crap I need to wake up or I might die' response. It fades. Not a lot of use on a long haul, where things out of the ordinary are few and far between.

There are all sorts of remedies to maintain ones eternal vigilance. Keep active, stay alert, sing songs, eat chips. They all work, for a while.

Routine is an interesting thing. I am a very ritualistic person. I like my cereal in this particular way. I like my fresh salmon in that particular way. I have a list of things I do before bed. I honestly believe I try and make the best out of every situation.

My cereal has the perfect milk to cereal ratio; not so much the cereal has floated upwards and begun to threaten falling over the rim, not so little that the leftover milk has thickened or changed consistency. This ratio is achieved by watching the cereal in the bowl as I pour, just after the edge of the cereal begins to mysteriously levitate, one slows the pour down to a mere dribble, while covering the entire contents of the bowl, and then stopping. Perfect.

I make salmon in the same way. Well, not with milk, that would be horrible. But I have a process, and its perfect. Every single time. There are many things that I like to do that I have turned into a similar process. I do them that way because I feel that it's the very best way to do them. Over time, nearly every repeatable thing I do becomes processed, in an effort to make it the best possible thing it could be, and that means I live a life of routine.

Going out or staying in, friends or activities, it doesn't really matter. These things can be beautiful, or exiting, or even novel- they are still part of my routine. Routine allows perfection, and at the same time invites stagnation.

And then suddenly I wake up. I don't like cereal anymore. I haven't been paying attention to my work, and things have changed. Old habits don't fit me or my world anymore, and it's never one thing, it seems like everything. It all demands change, from how I wake up to what I eat, to how I behave, to how I produce, to how I make love, to how I hang out- everything needs a tweak. And the most interesting thing is how very alive I feel, even though nothing is working out.

Change is in the air. Let's see how this plays out.