On The Merits of Routinaeity

After recently being diagnosed as suffering from a moderate case of blog fade, I am attempting to get back to the routine of semi-regular posting. I just returned home from the office, as I do five days a week, and have done for the past ten-and-a-half months. Today, I left at around 2 p.m. These summer days, I typically depart around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, due to my limited remaining fiscal hours, and the limited remaining worthwhile PR work to be done.

I walked to my car, parked in the same spot on top of the same parking deck it is five days a week, and as it has been for the past eight-and-a-half months (we moved downtown 2 months after I arrived). Heading south down the left side of Liberty Ave., I passed on the other side of the street the same young woman I passed at the same time yesterday. I know (of) her; she is a bartender at the coffee-shop-by-day/bar-by-night located just steps from the front door of our office on Court Square. She is young and pretty, though she wears heavy, dark eyeliner and has a large and conspicuous tattoo on her right arm, made evermore noticeable by her proclivity to wear sleeveless black tank tops, routinely.

I reached my car and as I sat felt the same rush of heat I did while entering my car yesterday. I flipped on the radio and heard the same song, Katy Perry's "Hot N' Cold," that was on at the same time yesterday. (It is a recognizable song, if forgettable in quality.) I turned my head to back out and felt the same crick in my neck I felt yesterday. I drove home, taking the same route I take five days a week and have taken for the past seven-and-a-half months (it took me a few weeks to determine the quickest path). I arrived at my apartment complex, stopped by my mailbox and retrieved a bill from the Harrisonburg Electric Commission, as I have done once a month for the past 9-and-a-half months (my first bill didn't arrive until my first full month of service).

I walked in and immediately changed clothes. In the winter, I would trade my dress pants for sweatpants; in summer, I tend toward gym shorts.

Yes, I've got a pretty good routine going.

The routinaeity (invented word) of my immediate post-work life is one reason why my at-work existence appeals to me. In my PR job (basically working as an in-house reporter) and my immediate previous newspaper job (basically working as a reporter in a medium perhaps most valuable for use in an outhouse), I have encountered quite a bit of variety.

I've interviewed art professors, science students, higher administrators and administrative hires; a Surgeon General, general surgeons, a major general and general studies majors; police and fire chiefs, fired police chiefs; athletes: foot-ballers and scratch bowlers; actors, musicians, stage-coaches and truck drivers; and a guy who harvested a strange-looking Siamese cucumber from his home garden, among many other interesting and different folks.

But even so, routinaeity invades. Anyone with intermediate training in literary analysis could pick up structural and thematic similarities threaded throughout most of my "news" and feature articles, especially the ones in PR. My leads are usually somewhat snappy, sometimes tangential and often form around a "this...but this" assertion.

I'll often use a little wordplay, a subtle pun here or there, and similar patterns of periodic and loose sentences. I insert words, or at least connotations, from the institutional mission statement throughout the piece, usually before ending with a nice two-paragraph shift, bringing the theme home--very similar to a couplet ending a classical sonnet. Thus, even stories so different in content as high-tech biology research and student political engagement leave a similar lingering impression (or at least that's the point).

Some would recognize it as skillful writing, at least for a PR person. I tend to view it more as a mere aptitude, (the word skillful seems to me to imply a certain degree of challenge to be overcome, which I find absent from most of my assignments.) I'll give myself credit for typically conducting a decent amount of research, or familiarization, with the material before an interview, a decent interpersonal manner and questioning style which usually can extract a soundbite similar to that which I seek, solid note-taking and a good ability to make connections between the specific information and the "bigger picture" of the mission/messaging. But none of those things are particularly difficult, nor do they require much training to master.

I hope you don't infer too much of a negative tone toward routinaeity in everyday life from this post, though. In fact, I think it's a) mostly inevitable and b) not necessarily a bad thing.

Though various theories and laws of entropy generally state that worlds, environments and societies tend to move toward a state of increasing disorder, often human behavior tends toward homogeneity (I know that many of you will probably take to task that overgeneralization, or in some other way tangentially riff upon that sentiment; such an act would follow the routine of our typical blogversations [another invented {and poor-quality} word]) And it makes sense.

Psychologically, we feel comfortable in familiar situations, because we can expect comfortable outcomes. Whether it's knowing that my parking spot will be devoid of puddles should it rain, or that my boss will heap praise upon me for a "good" story, or that I can look forward to a generally entertaining hour of low-stress entertainment on "Top Chef: Masters" every Wednesday night at 10 p.m., it's nice that a lot of things in life are relatively certain. Call it Pavlovian, call it safe, comfortable or just reassuring.

Without such common tasks falling into some kind of order, people, I think, would begin to tend toward a state of entropy. If I didn't take the same route and park in the same spot most work mornings, I could get stuck in unexpected traffic, or my car could be stuck in a low spot on the parking deck. In such cases, I might be late to work, displeasing my boss, or my shoes might get wet, displeasing my toes. Innumerable more examples exist all around us.

But also apparently innate to humans, in addition to a tendency toward familiarity, is a small part of the spirit that yearns for excitement, a break from routinaeity, adventure. Call it thrill-seeking, pioneering, broadening one's horizons. I see little logical explanation for such a phenomenon. If a creature has all its biological needs met in a certain environment, it would have no reason to leave it. So why do humans wish to explore?

Please weigh in with your thoughts. You know the routine.