I Can't Stop Myself

How do you tell the difference between a rut and a routine? A routine is a good thing to be in but a rut is something you have to pull yourself out of—and fast. A routine is something you get into on your way towards a better you and a rut is some God-awful sameness that you experience day after day. A rut grinds you down until there is nothing left but a soft, incoherent blob. But at what point does a routine become a rut or a “rut-tine” if you will?

Even if most of what you do throughout the course of your day is good for you, a mindless, grinding repetition of these activities is as self-destructive as any of the sins that land other people in rehab clinics.

If I so much as order a different size of coffee my day is shot to hell. That is a different size, lord help me if I order a completely new form of coffee—I’d probably need medical attention. If I don’t walk into my gym between 11-11:15 the gals at the front desk start phoning the local hospitals to find out what has happened to me (not that they care about me, they are just sales-oriented—God bless them) .

I recently watched the movie Matchstick Men that dealt with obsessive-compulsive disorders. Just because some guy opens and closes a door three times makes him a freak? Try a guy (me) who, because today is Tuesday, needs to get his heart beat up to 165 beats per minutes and he has a little electronic device that helps him do it. How creepy would it be if you knew someone who played piano and they had all of their diverse music bound up in one book with the exact fingering for each note scribbled on the sheet music in red pencil?

Getting scared yet? How about these freak-toids:

Coffee: 16 oz. drip, one equal and a half packet of sugar.

Breakfast at the Mecca (a local restaurant and bar): I get the #7 and I’ve never ordered anything else.

All bills face up in my wallet, no change in my pockets, before I have taken two steps from my bed in the morning I hit the radio button for NPR, although I have about 800 CD’s I only listen to Glenn Gould’s English Suites (and only one or two movements of that CD). Only if people are over and I don’t want them to know what a weirdo I am will I put on other music to show them what a diverse and spontaneous guy I am.

There is more but I will spare you the gruesome details. The sad thing is that the more I am in my “rut-tine” the happier I am, the more “productive” I feel I have been that day. Just exactly what I am producing in this productivity besides neurosis is not obvious to me. Beneath my calm, boring exterior lies someone who may one day order a latte instead of a drip coffee in the morning. I shudder at the consequences if this madman is unleashed on the general public.