I’m starting to notice that as I begin my fifth decade spinning around the sun that I’m starting to dig a rut. A history nut will tell you that Henry Ford’s real innovation wasn’t the Model T, it was the way he built it. Teach enough people to do one small part of a larger process and they’ll develop comfortable expertise in that task.

I think that comfortable expertise is something that we all subconsciously try to achieve in our personal lives as well. Well, at least I do. It could be that the rest of you revel in your uncomfortable ineptness.

I buy gas at the same two gas stations.

I drive the same route to the coast every time I go there for work. I eat at the same fast food restaurants on the way there and back. And when I’m there, I tend to eat at the same 2 places for lunch. Probably because the people that I eat lunch with are stuck in their own rituals.

I hit the treadmill at the same time every day that I work locally and walk the same 4 miles. Being a treadmill, the scenery tends to be the same.

And I definitely like using only one toilet in the entire world. The rest just give me the sceevies. I’m not sure if that’s ritual though. Quite likely it’s some sort of deep seated neurosis or phobia. Only my wife probably knows for sure.

Most of these rituals I think are kind of normal. But I think that over time I’ve developed some that I’m having issues with and trying to change them is proving to be harder then I expected.

Years ago, when I first started playing MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online games, for the tragically lost), it use to be a lot of fun to get together with my online friends, drink enough to blur the lines between my keyboard and immersive gaming, and have a generally good time.

Through Asheron’s Call, Everquest 2, Anarchy Online, EVE, Conan, Warhammer Online, and a ton of others, this became my norm. The games changed and, except for a few exceptions, so did the people I played them with. But the ritual stayed the same (the alternate song title that Led Zepplin rejected).

I’ll admit, though, that the *Amount* of drinking varied. It was sort of a bell curve between two beers over a four hour period on one end and, “Where the heck did Dog go? He stopped moving and now he’s disconnected” at the other end. The gradients in the middle generally involved either normal drunken gaming to pissing off everyone I know. But I digress.

I’m not sure if you can call it a New Year’s Resolution, or parental concern for the environment that our son was growing up in, but the wife and I stopped drinking at home at the beginning of the year. As some of my more vocal friends will tell you (I’m looking at YOU, Rob) this isn’t the first time. But you have to start somewhere and so far we’ve stuck to it.

Well, I have. My wife is barking at the moon crazy half the time and I’m not sure if I could tell if she’s drinking or not any more.

The bitch is, I”m not having as much fun playing MMOs.

A few of us decided to give WoW a try again after being clean for 2 or 3 years. There really isn’t a coin that they give you for that, although there should be, so I’m sort of unsure on what our record is. But we re-activated our accounts three weeks ago. My son is a lot older now, and he’s playing with us. So that’s pretty cool.

I can play the same old games with the same old people. I even enjoy it. But I have to admit that I really miss the ritual.

I think I need to replace my old bad example ritual with a new ritual.

I wonder if playing nekkid is bad?

-d