MY NEW AUTOMATIC DEFAULT POSITION
Thursday Oct. 2, 2014
I must start …
Too much not-done yesterday lingers on my plate like cold day-old caked-on eggs.
How can I start today before I finish that?
What is really going on here inside my head?
Good-cop – bad cop tussle mode, a good-habit – bad-habit thing going on for me right now.
Good habits. Familiar habits. New habits. Bad habits.
Yes, all of those, breaking some new ground ...
Not necessarily whole-hearted mode for better, effective, healthy and purposeful ones.
It seems so easy, in planning … but thrown into whirling-dervish action? … and reaction?
Different matter entirely.
When life-unpredictability raises its head every morning, we raise ours. Off the pillows, off our mats, we stand up and go about our business.
Like willow trees, we bend. Sometimes bending-far, each day filled with strong winds, immovable forces. Mixed calm, with heart-thumping joys, with rages and I often wonder, is this the new me?
Or same-old me in a new wrapper?
New regime, new routine – all good, but throw in a disruption or two and I find I so easily slip into old habits.
Not that I want to, but I do.
If there is reason at all for routine – it is to keep us sane.
But my old-routine includes old habits, bad habits and things I never thought about much.
They are just … old habits.
Habit and routine have their place.
Keep us employed, healthy, housed, financially well-ordered. Mostly, they keep us sane.
When new-routine falters, fails me, old habits kick in.
The trick, I suppose, is to make my new habits so deeply ingrained, that they become my default, became my new automatic.
I must start anyway. Any way … is better than sitting frozen, like some deer in the headlights. I know, as this day unfolds, I will get much of it wrong. Much of it will be half-baked, leftover, half-started and too much action and reaction of old.
But, at the core of it, is change.
I trust that. Right now I trust change more than anything else. With it, each day brings surprises. Lately those surprises have been mostly good ones, nice surprises, amazing reconnections with people I lost touch with – or ones I just passed like those proverbial ships in the night …
Mark Kolke
column written/ published from Calgary
morning walk: -1C/30F, clear and breezy – which is fine, the day will be nice, but snow encrusted cars in traffic proves that snow last night did not melt everywhere. Gusta enjoys the chill, breeze ripples her coat a little and her nose was busy catching smells as they blew by …
