Routine

The prompt for today's REVERB14 is:

What tiny rituals: signal that your day is starting, help you ease into a creative project, give you closure from an intensive task, or mark other significant milestones in your day?  What new rituals would you like to create in the new year?

"If you cannot find your way on the beaten path, then perhaps the time has come to blaze your own."

I suppose my morning ritual is my husband waking me up (his job starts earlier than mine) by saying "Wake up. I gotta go" while violently shaking me awake...he is THE WORST person to have wake you up, I swear it.  The phrase "I gotta go" is kind of a running joke between me and him, because he repeats it at least ten times before he actually leaves the house.  No one is trying to stop him from leaving...it's just his weird way of saying goodbye.

Nowadays, I'm pretty much a zombie for the first half hour my eyes are open.  My mom teases me about my inability to have a simple conversation first thing in the morning.  But that wasn't always the case.

I used to be able to jump out of bed ready to face the day...you know, one of those annoyingly perky people that field mice and song birds help dress in the morning (a la Cinderella)?  Yeah, that used to be me.  I used to be the kind of girl who got more stuff done before breakfast than most people do all day.

That Cinderella version of me (Sweets-erella or is it CinderSweets?) got killed off a long time ago at the hands of apathy...at first from others and then my own.  Indifference is extremely contagious.

For instance, if you spend all day cleaning your house, just to have someone come in and crap it up in thirty minutes, you eventually quit trying...or maybe that was just me.

When there are two people involved in something, both people have to work towards the same goal.  When it seems that the person who's supposed to be on your team is in the routine of undermining your efforts, you get discouraged and will eventually stop putting forth that effort.  It doesn't necessarily mean you've given up on your goal...just that you recognize the fruitlessness of trying to accomplish it at the current time.  Eventually, it becomes your routine not to care either or at least to live with things as they are because it's too much work to do anything else.  But the stress caused by not accomplishing the things you want to simmers under the surface and you eventually start sleeping through the alarm clock and you start drop-kicking the birds and mice that came to help you dress...again, maybe that's just me...

I've gotten to the point where I am apathetic about things that should be important and I hate it.  I've got no respect for that type of person.

Apathy is a well worn path at my house, but I refuse to let it be the endgame.

Things will change for me very soon.  I will make them change.  And in time, the routine I'm currently in will be nothing but a distant memory, written off as a learning experience.

Eventually, the birds and mice will forgive me and come help me dress in the morning again.  My house will stay clean.  And instead of being apathetic, this will be me:

...beavers around the world will rejoice at how many damns I give.

I've realized I can't keep taking the same road and expect it to get me anywhere other than where it's always gotten me.  Instead, I've got to be bold, branch off, and start a new path.  

It seems scary and overwhelming now, because I've gotten so used to my routine...but I know that, in time, I will have a new routine that was forged by my own two hands.  

As Helen Keller put it, "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing".  I'm not scared and overwhelmed, I'm an adventurer!  I'm not getting lost out in the world, I'm a trailblazer, making my own way.  And I am not Rhett Butler, because, frankly, my dears, I DO give a damn.