I read comics.

I read the same comics every day, on comics.com. It's a very set routine; I have lots of very set routines. I read 9 Chickweed Lane, then Agnes, Brevity, A Case in Point, For Better or Worse, Frazz, Get Fuzzy, Li'l Abner, Luann, Over the Hedge, Pearls Before Swine, Pibgorn, and Pickles. The only variation is that sometimes I don't bother with Pickles. When I walk to school, I go the same way every time. There are about twenty-two million ways I could go---permutations and deviations and missed formations---but I don't. I always go the same way. To school, to library, to chow hall, to mailroom, to school, to dorm, to conditioning, to dorm . . . My footfalls never falter, never alter, never change. My pathways are unchanging constants in a constantly changing world. My weekends can be similarly mapped---or could. Until lately.

If you read my previous post, you see that I did not sleep at all Saturday night. That's not routine. I went for a walk. That's not routine. In fact, nothing about my weekend was routine. It was all different, and I enjoyed it immensely. As a rule, I don't like change. I'm not OCD or anything; I just like knowing how things are going to work. And when they change, they create possibilities that I no longer know. I guess that's why I've been so hopped up on adrenalin for the past three days . . . I feel like I'm running headlong down a dark, forested hill, and I can't see where I'm going and I don't know what's at the bottom. If I were to do that for real, say, two weeks ago, I would've hated it. But I used to do it for real all the time, when I was growing up, say, 12 years ago. And I loved it. I used to love the feeling of running in the dark over uneven, unknown, invisible ground. It's such a rush. I don't know when that changed; maybe I hit a wall or stepped in a hole or just got older and came to understand the risks.

I've always been bad at moderation. I can do all or nothing. So my younger self, the one that climbed trees and ran in the dark and sledded facefirst, has jumped the gap to the me of two weeks ago, who never willingly did anything without knowing exactly what the consequences would be. And now I'm running again. To Hell with Consequences! And that may be where it takes me . . .