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By Justin Davies
Special to Salt City Hoops

I once had a roommate who survived on routine. Now when I say the guy survived on routine, I’m not exaggerating. I truly believe that if his routine was altered by more than a few degrees, he was at best not functional – and at worst impossible to be around. The guy was up at the exact same time every single morning, ate the same breakfast, lunch, dinner, stuck religiously to the same bedtime, always bought the same cheap toothpaste, told the same bad jokes… The rigid structure he’d created was the only way he knew how to function.

I used to mock him for this. I’d hide his supply of tuna fish so he’d be forced to eat something different for lunch, or I’d purposefully plan spontaneous group activities late at night in hopes we’d keep him from his precious early bedtime. I’d do just about anything I could think of to spice up what I viewed as terribly mundane. When it came down to it, I really just couldn’t understand how it was he could function like that day in and day out, so I took it upon myself to try to experience a little spontaneity.

So now here I am, years later, feeling pangs of sympathy for my old roommate. Not because I’ve simply become a more understanding and all-around better person… No, far from it…

You see, without knowing it, I had my own routine. As much as I thought I lived life off the cuff, and embraced spontaneity, I had my very own version of his rigid schedule. A routine that I’d become fully dependent on over the last two decades without so much as an inkling that I had.
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