Oh Routine.  What am I going to do with you?  You make things so mundane, so ordinary, so repetitive and well … so routine.  You are the enemy of passion and fun. You are the oppressor of joy.

Oh how rote you are routine?

How repetitive, how boring, how dull?

Where is your spice?  Your zest for life?

You are often unannounced and imposed. So full of stealth and so deeply woven into the fabric of my day that often months or years go by and I don’t even see you.  I have felt the life ebbing from me before I noticed you.

Why do you imprison me so?

Yet without you I am easily spent

My energy misdirected.  My mood anxious, my results weak.

Without you I spend precious time meandering the paths of indecision.  What to do, when to do it, how to do it, where to do it?  With whom?  Every time a decision.

I miss you in this artist’s life.

You are much less rigid out here,

Your stealth grip is not present where rules are not yet written

And I feel more highs.

Yet I come to miss you when you’re not here.  I tire now, not because of your vice grip, but because without your seamless rein I gallop about like an aimless colt.   I move a lot.  Alas too much.

So I propose a new arrangement.   A dance.

Two of us being in the dance.

Aware of us both

in the dance.

You lead.   I follow.  I choose the music and hence the dance, and you lead. I follow. We will bring spice and zest to our dance.  We will invent new steps, new moves as we go along.  Together.

Yet never forget,

I choose the music, and the dance.

You lead.

I follow.

We will collaborate, and coordinate.  I will allow myself to be moved by you as long as it serves me.  Then I will stop the dance and choose another song, or even a new genre.

And again you will lead, and I will follow.  Thus will you add structure to my life, while allowing passion, and play to live happily in the dance.