Skip to main content

Repeat -- Writer's Poke #432



If you go into your favorite restaurant, do you have a good idea what you’ll order before you look at the menu? Even so, you still look at the menu, right? Why? Social convention? Or, is it actually possible that you might order the Spam and peanut butter sandwich?

If you’re at home and need to go to the store to pick up some household items, where do you go? If you normally go to Target for these items, how likely is it that you will, on a whim, decide to go some place different? Have you ever ended up at Shopko if you always shop at Target?

What about when you wake up in the morning, and you need to get ready to go to work? Is it pretty likely that you have a developed routine that you more or less follow? I bet you even know how much time you need to complete this routine. And if you drive to work, you have a designated route, don’t you? How often do you try different routes? For that matter, how often do you think to carpool or walk or bike or take the bus? In other words, even though you have other options available, you don’t utilize them. You probably don’t even consider them.

People – yes you too – are predictable. That Spam and peanut butter sandwich might be heaven on a bun; you might save hundreds of dollars a year shopping at Shopko; and think of all the new friends you might make if you took the bus to work. But you’ll never know, because you aren’t the type to try anything out of the ordinary.

Who is?



How predictable are you? Does it bother you?


“One you become predictable, no one’s interested anymore.” – Chet Atkins

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #1 - Real Coffee with Scott Adams

I've been curious about how others perceive reality. What is "true" and "real" to me is not necessarily "true" and "real" to others.  First stop: Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert.  He's currently 67, does a daily podcast called "Real Coffee with Scott Adams" which draws about 30,000 listeners on YouTube, with 172,000 total subscribers to the channel. Podcast is also available on all the usual places, with a 4.4 rating on Apple Podcasts. Each episode is about an hour long, or a little less.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15SFbr2vj8c 1. Basic format: Just runs through news articles that drew his interest. On the April 15 episode (link above), he ran through 28 articles. Often he'd laugh at something, sometimes to show his disbelief.  2. Adams is not a big fan of science. He's open to conspiracy theories. Believes that the government doesn't tell us the truth (although he seems to think the Trump administration is an e...

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #2 -- Bald and Bankrupt

His first name is Benjamin, but he usually goes by "Bald." Bald has been posting travel videos since 2018. His passion is anything Soviet Union, but he will take the time to learn a language before he visits a place -- not only Russian, but Spanish, say. It's important for him to have the ability to speak to people in their native tongue.  On Friday, April 18, Bald posted a video called "Solo on Ukraine's Eastern Front." So far it's generated 2.7 million views, and based on viewer average, it will likely go over 5 million views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3HRnwC6pso Most of his videos are in the neighborhood of an hour in length. In them, he usually establishes where he is and what his goal for being there is. He will start somewhere and then go seek out a place, without knowing exactly what he will find there.  For the latest Ukraine video, he starts at the Kiev train station. It's been 3 years, he says, since he last visited Ukraine, and he h...

The Unconventional Life

How conventional is your life? If you're in your 30s as I am, think about how much you and I have in common: Spouce? check Kid(s)? check Job? check House? check Debt? check Obviously there's nothing wrong with conventional living, but if that's all there is, it seems kind of robotic to me. We have our freewill, and yet we all go through similar life stages, and we all share basic common experiences. What makes my life any different, then, from a million other lives in the Western world? This bothers me, and I yearn to make my life more unconventional. Of course people that are "unconventional" often find themselves being unconventional in uniform ways. So, perhaps there's no way out of the box. There's no way to live a life that someone else hasn't already lived. And maybe that's okay. I would just like to be able to add some unconventional elements to the satisfactory conventional elements of my life. The question is: How can I do that w...