Patterns

It is exceedingly easy for me to fall into simple patterns. Something about the way my brain has been programmed makes it susceptible to routine and sameness. Like a mill ox, if I do something enough times I start digging myself into a rut and remain content to loop around in it endlessly.

I can illustrate this with eleventh grade of high school. I transferred from private to public school when I entered high school, so I didn't really know anyone or have any war-buddies from the recess playground. The people I did know in school were the people I happened to know from outside activities, and they all happened to be at least two years older than me. Come junior year, all my friends had already graduated and I had nobody to sit with at lunch.

Rather than remedy this problem in a socially progressive manner, I solved it in an intellectually conservative one: I didn't go to lunch, I went to the library. During my lunch hour, when most kids were packed into the cafeteria and standing in line for chicken nuggets swimming in an oddly yellow gravy, I'd head straight to the library. I usually either read whatever novel I was halfway into or do some homework that was due later that day (honestly, outside if class it was the only time I got any homework done) or, if I was absolutely without a thing to do, I'd just wander the aisles and flip through whatever book looked interesting.

The teacher of the class I had right after lunch didn't mind us eating in class so long as we were done by the time he started talking, so I ate my lunch then. I had the timing worked out to Swiss precision. Seven minutes before lunch was over, I'd leave the library and head to the cafeteria (the lines were gone by now) and get the same thing: a turkey wrap and a mixed frozen Coke and cherry. I'd bring these things to my next class and be at my seat with a few minutes before class begun. I'd quickly scarf down the sandwich, and take my time with the frozen drink and watch CNN on the classroom TV until the teacher turned it off and began lecturing.

This pattern repeated continuously for months. Every day, the same thing. Read in silence, turkey and high fructose corn syrup in silence.

Occasionally I would feel some kind of repetitive stress bubbling up at the base of my psyche and like some kind of free-spirited Haight-Ashburian I would smash conformity and add a Rice Crispies Treat to my order at the cafeteria.

I don't really know the significance of that, other than it is representative of how comfortable I can get with patterns.

For the last six months I've found myself in a hell of a pattern where I haven't "blogged" a thing here.

I know exactly why that is. Since I moved to Chicago and away from my family I noticed that they started using this place as a way of keeping up with my life, which kind of eeked me out. Also, since this website was on my resume most of the people at my job were aware of it and referenced it occasionally, which also eeked me out. Then I'd get the occasional reader comment from some person I don't know at all but has been reading this space for years for reasons I can only estimate at being its own little rut for them. That, too, eeked me out.

In short, I have a hard time finding the tone for what I put here. If I was ever on stage in front of an audience comprised of my family, my real-life (TM) friends, my internet friends, and my coworkers, I wouldn't really have much to talk about. I think most people have their "friend self" and their "work self" and their "family self," and like most people I generally have the luxury of keeping those selves on distant islands separated by oceans of distance and interest and the cost of airline travel. When it comes to putting words on this page, however, I can't pick a self.

In the end, I usually round up and write something that I'd be comfortable with my mom reading while I sit across a dinner table with my hands folded, trying to guess how far she is by the pattern of smiles and eyebrow-furrows.

It's a crippling thing, really, and in a lot of ways it's why I haven't officially said a thing here since March. I implemented the Twitter system because with 140 characters I can keep things light on context and emotion.

Thing is, though, I think I'm usually a lot happier when I'm blogging, or at least writing regularly. When I don't write, I kind of sink down into my head and set up camp and build an infrastructure and establish a small economy and chamber of commerce in there. My head's an interesting place to be, and I wouldn't mind terribly if an intergalactic villain sentenced me to a lifetime there, but the outside world passes by pretty fast when I'm in there.

But now that I've established this pattern of inaction, it's hard to break out of it. I've wanted to write something here countless times, but my screwed-up brain gets more satisfaction out of maintaining a pattern, for better or worse.

So this post is, in some way, a step toward the compromise I eventually need to make with myself. Eventually, I'm going to have to say the type of things I wouldn't want to say in proximity to my mother and I'm going to have to go to work some morning not knowing whether everybody around me read whatever self-aggrandizing nonsense I'd furiously typed into this box the night before.

This post is a Rice Crispies Treat. I hope it works. I think you and I could have some fun together here.

Watch this space.