He wakes at the precise moment every day fearful of breaking routine. Puts the right sock on first, and his right leg through his underwear, and then proceeds on the left side in the same methodical manner for all his thirty plus years on earth. “Disaster most assuredly follows the man without a plan,” he whispers. You could time your watch by his movements–precise. Walking out the door in his Tuesday shirt and pants, yes, he is ready to greet the world on his terms. A part of the landscape, and they are never curious about him anymore. Unless he breaks up his routine, they will never notice or care. Always on time, he has become a slave to his own expectations. Do not step on the crack or walk on the line. Disaster will soon follow. Routine. It is all routine.  He weaves around the garbage cans, so carelessly left on the street, his nose twitches at the aroma. He thinks they must have failed at planning somewhere along the line. Decaying cheese is all that fills his nostrils today.  Someone must clean this mess up, or I will have to. The random thought scares him and throws him off balance.  What was he thinking? A left, two rights, then a U-turn around the next bend, he is almost there. But there is someone in his path, so he crosses to the opposite side of the street. Continuing along the street until he realizes, he does not know where he is. Disorientation fills him with panic. If only there had not been someone in his path, he could have followed the routine that brought him to his destination every single day. This is the way he has been doing it for the longest time, there must be no deviation from his procedures, so life goes on the same as yesterday. 

**** 

 Style is a way of being stagnant.  People cling to a style because it worked previously. What this reminds me of is the obsessive-compulsive disorder involved in writing. I have certain deficits in my writing, so I use subterfuge to cover it all.  

When I started writing, the main criticism of my work was two-dollar words. Two-dollar words are fancier words than most of the audience would understand.   

No writer wants to fall into the rut of routine writing.  Imagine writing the same story, but with various aspects, it would be counterproductive, and you would lose intuition and insight.  I fell into this style of passive/aggressive writing in pure frustration with the system.  Not happy with the outcome of this environment, I needed to get out while my brains and heart were still active and yearning. 

Risk is part of writing.  Going out on a limb in writing is profitable.  Not everything an author writes will be popular or good enough, but often we can find other ways of making this time spent on risky writing to discover something interesting and worthwhile. 

Every single author, who is self-aware, knows not everything he will write is good enough.  In that struggle to write something decent, he must slog through bad writing and get better.  There is a constant state of editing, reediting, recycling or trashing it.  I have heard of some writers and poets celebrating their inferior writing by making it available.  That takes guts. 

I have a tendency towards sarcasm, so I try to write versions of my poems and write positive stories to combat a negative tendency.  It is that ability to stretch my limits of writing that is so invaluable to keep actively writing.  My inability to write emotional scenes has become problematic, so I cover it up with writing with a more masculine point of view.   

On a positive note, I am aware and acknowledge my own fallacies, so growth is a major concern. Challenging myself to produce new methods to address my deficiencies is something I do consciously. My style is sarcastic, but not really if you look deeper, I have an endless stream of idealism.  What I do not want to lose sight of is the value of love and kindness and to think universally instead of a rat in a maze.  Not to take over the world but to understand it from other points of view.