Well, blogging is part of the routine.

Today was better.

It's amazing how utterly dependent we are on routine. It's amazing how much every single one of us likes to have a normal, an outline of the day that he or she can blindly follow time after time after time. Now, is this inclination to regulate activity into a pattern a natural impulse or something we as a species have developed, to replace the instinct that drives other creatures? Because we have been granted the ability to think, does it make us feel safer if we do not have to?

School, as an unfortunate example, has been completely engraved in our minds, branded into our being, as a part of this routine. When we are older, work will replace school in the routine, and by the time we retire we shall all be too tired to care that we no longer know what to do with ourseves. It is entirely likely that we will then begin new routines (bridge on friday with the girls!).

I think it is sad that we are lost without our normals. I think it is sad that anyone can be bored during the summer. I think it is equally sad that those who look forward to summer as the only free time of their lives must endure such a long stretch of work. Truly school is preparation for the future in this way more than any other: causing us to accept and welcome routine into our lives.

But there is no future worth wasting the present in order to prepare for. Life starts now. It doesn't start when you turn eighteen or twenty-one or forty. It doesn't start when you graduate or are hired for the very first time. Life began well over a decade ago, my friends, and it is not going to hang around while you finish up your homework.

Think of a life without routine. I don't mean that we should constantly live for the moment, having fun and thinking of nothing but having fun, but imagine if we had no need of normal. Does that not seem incomprehensible? Is that not a beautiful lunacy?

The piece of cardboard covering part of my window fell off. Looks like it's going to be a chilly night.

I promise never to leave you, as long as you want me around.