The Routine

Sitting in a Starbucks in Downtown Milwaukee with a hot cup of coffee, I look out the window to see the city waking and getting started.  Groggy businessmen and women come through the door, bundled up to guard against the cold, and greet the baristas with warm familiarity.  “Your usual?” asks the young man behind the counter.  The businesswoman, purse and briefcase in hand, smiles, looks up to the overhead speaker playing Christmas music, and orders a Christmas pastry as well.

This routine plays out in seemingly every big or small city in the Western Hemisphere.  Just as much as it is part of their morning routines, it is part of mine.  When I don’t have to fly in the morning, I find the nearest coffee shop to sit down with a cup of coffee and watch the world awaken.  From capital cities of Charleston, WV to Sacramento, CA; from the mountains of Guatamala City, Guatamala and Salt Lake City, UT to the coastal port cities of San Juan, P.R and Seattle, WA; from the rainforests of San Jose, Costa Rica and San Salvador, El Salvador to the deserts of Albuquerque, NM and Phoenix, AZ; from the sprawling metropolises of Mexico City, Mexico and New York City, NY to the comparitively minute downtowns of Richmond, VA and Kansas City, MO, it always the same.  People,struggling against the inertia of far too little sleep, seek the warmth and energy promised in a small cup of liquid.  They are off to meetings, the airport, or coming in from a morning run.  They buy a single cup or carry out an order for the whole office.  The only difference I can ever tell is the language being spoken and the climate it is spoken in.

From my comfortable corner leather chair near the warmth of the gas fireplace, I sit and read.  It is then that I realize, man, I haven’t blogged in awhile.  When I open the website, it hasn’t just been awhile.  It’s been a year and a half and that’s the problem with routine.  As I sit here and watch the world get started, I enter my own routine that has somehow pushed writing to the far fringes.

Not making time is not the only problem.  My job has become a routine of its own.  For the vast majority of trips, everything goes as planned.  As compared to my regional airline, I’ve never once been involved in a flight cancelation.  I’ve never had maintenance delay more than 30 minutes.  I’ve yet to have to divert for weather.  I’ve never “timed-out” although I have been close.  There is very little chaos, very little confusion, very little anything interesting.

It is for that I apologize.  I know people have really enjoyed reading my blogs almost as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. There have been less than a handful of situations that have even remotely warranted addressing in a blog in the last 1.5 years and I promise to share them here in the new year.  For everything else, it’s just been routine.