I will confess to being a bit of a creature of habit. I don’t know how much of that is stubbornness and liking routine and how much is because once I find something that works I don’t see a reason to change it. That can sometimes mean I get stuck in a rut or don’t realize when things have changed so that this isn’t the best thing for me now. I’ve found a good example of that in the past couple of weeks.

When I first started working from home for my public relations job more than 20 years ago, I got in the habit of watching the local midday news on TV while I ate lunch. That kept me on a good schedule, since the news was on at noon, and they did the health news usually starting around 12:25 (I was still doing some medical writing then). That meant if I turned on the TV at 12:25, I could catch the health news, then the bottom-of-the-hour repeat of the top stories at 12:30 and get the weather forecast, along with any entertainment news that they put at the end, and I’d be back to work at 1.

Then about four years ago they moved the midday news to 11, which didn’t fit my lunch schedule. I got the bright idea to set a season recording on my DVR, and then I could start lunch whenever I wanted and forward past commercials or any stories or segments I didn’t care about. This meant I ended up spending more time, since I was often watching the whole newscast instead of half of it, and I wasn’t keeping to a steady schedule anymore. But I never questioned whether I needed to make any changes.

Until a couple of weeks ago. My DVR runs on Android TV, and Google did its usual thing of discontinuing an application, rendering the device that runs on it useless. The application that gives the program information is no longer updated, so the DVR season recordings don’t work. It can get the program info for the channel it’s set on, so a couple of hours before something comes on you can manually set a recording. It finally occurred to me to wonder why I should bother. I read the newspaper and then I watch the national and local news in the evening. I don’t need to repeat the same news throughout the day. I’ve started watching videos on writing, history, and other things that are moderately educational while I eat lunch, and after two weeks I already don’t miss the news at all. I’m learning something, am less stressed (without all the doom and gloom from the news), and I’m spending less time on my lunch break. The TV station has most of the individual segments on their app and YouTube channel, so I can get the weather report or anything else I want to see without watching the whole newscast.

So far, I’ve already gone through a series of writing workshops and a few history documentaries. Or, if it’s a nice day, I take my lunch outside and just read. I guess I could bring out my tablet and watch videos outside while I eat lunch. I feel rather liberated by removing this bit of routine. I suppose this means I should look at other things I could change, but I don’t want to shock my system too much.

It’s the time of year when I usually gripe about not being ready for the holidays. I may be better about that this year since I got to experience actual autumn in October this fall by going to Virginia (and driving through the mountains of Tennessee on the way). I think a lot of my holiday resistance usually has to do with it finally feeling like fall here around Thanksgiving, so I don’t get to experience the autumn vibes before the holiday stuff hits.

But I’m still not ready for all holidays, all the time. The trees just started turning fall colors, which makes it hard to make the mental switch. The classical radio station I usually keep on in my office switched to all holiday music the day after Thanksgiving, and I’m not up for that. I’d have preferred a more gradual transition, like start with most of their usual programming and then add in some holiday pieces, increasing the proportion of holiday content as the season progresses. As it is, I’m already sick of some of the holiday pieces not quite a week in, with me just listening while I eat breakfast, read in bed at night, and drive. I can’t listen to Christmas music while I work. Most of that music has words that I know, so even if it’s instrumental my brain tries to sing along, which distracts me from work. Even worse, I’ve performed a lot of the music, so it catches my attention even more.

On the other hand, I rack up the score on the little “six degrees of classical music” game I play when listening to the radio. I get points for a piece I’ve performed, a piece I’ve seen live in concert, a recording I own, or a performer (individual artist, conductor, or group) I’ve seen in person. As a veteran choir member, I’ve performed a ton of Christmas music. I get a lot of points from John Rutter. I’ve sung most of his Christmas music and have seen him conduct in person, and I have his Christmas album, so I own most of the recordings they use on the radio, which gives me triple points. I’ve sung Messiah. They play a lot of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas stuff, and I’ve been at a choir workshop with the former director who’s the conductor for most of their recordings and have been conducted by him, so I get points there. They play a lot of things by ensembles I’ve seen in person, like the Dallas Symphony, Boston Pops, Turtle Creek Chorale, and Baltimore Consort (and I have their Christmas album, so double points). But all that means I can’t listen while I work. My brain zooms in on the music and puts words to it, which clashes with the words I’m trying to create in my head.

Our neighborhood tree lighting is this weekend, and I may go to that, which could help me kick off the season, and then I may get around to putting up my own decorations. I’ve told myself I’m taking a staycation when I finish the book I’m working on, and then I’ll really indulge in the holiday vibe. I’m putting together a “bucket list” of local holiday things I want to do in what may be my last holiday season in this area. Next year, I may be in an entirely different place. The seasons seem to line up better there, so maybe I’ll be more ready for the holidays next year.

I’m more or less back to work after a big Thanksgiving adventure, but then there was a follow-up adventure that threw this week out of whack.

Thanksgiving week, I drove to my parents’ house in East Texas (about a 2-hour drive from where I live). Then on Tuesday, I drove my parents in their car (bigger, nicer, and more comfortable than mine) to Houston to my brother’s house for Thanksgiving. Then Friday morning, I drove us back to my parents’ house, and then I drove home on Saturday. I got to hang out with my brother and his dog, see his house, and spoil his dog. I got lots of good puppy cuddles and ate a lot of good food. The good/bad was that I didn’t get any Thanksgiving leftovers since it wouldn’t have been a great idea to transport them for that long a trip. I wouldn’t have minded a bit of turkey, but it was nice not to have to worry about getting sick of it. I certainly ate enough on the day itself.

Driving my parents’ car gave me a sharp contrast to my car, which is nearly 16 years old, the bare basic model, and with a stick shift. My parents were getting concerned about me driving such an old car, even though it didn’t have too many miles on it. I know if I go through with moving to the mountains, I’ll need a new car. I doubt mine would survive the trip or manage all the hills in Staunton. I’d been researching cars ever since that trip. It looked like about half the cars in the town were Subaru Foresters, so I figured that was a good place to start. I’d read all the reviews and had started doing some online shopping, but the only cars in my budget were used and had more miles on them than my car had.

Until I was scrolling through the dealer sites over the weekend and saw exactly the car I wanted, low mileage, and at a good price. It was even the color I wanted. It felt like it was meant to be. I checked with the dealer Monday morning, went in for a test drive that afternoon, and decided to go for it. I picked it up this morning. It’s a lease return, which explains the relatively low mileage, and it’s one of the fancier trims, so it has all the fancy bells and whistles. For life in the mountains, it’ll be especially handy to have all-wheel drive, a special mode for driving on ice/snow/mud, and heated seats. I’ll have to get used to rolling a window down with the touch of a button instead of cranking, and it will be an adjustment to drive an automatic transmission after driving a stick shift ever since I was 18, though I did get some practice on my trip to Virginia and on the trip to Houston, so I’m not quite as rusty.

Now that I have all that excitement out of the way, I’m hoping I can settle down and concentrate more on work.

Oh, and I even got one of those cheesy big, red bows like they have in all the car commercials.

I’ve been really distracted this week, doing the thing where I stare at the screen and am a million miles away even though I know what I want to write next. Random things pop into my head, and I find myself following mental rabbit trails. I know part of it is because I have a lot of stuff to think about right now, like getting ready for a big Thanksgiving trip and making decisions about where I may spend the rest of my life and whether to move halfway across the country. But mostly, this sort of thing happens when my brain knows that the thing I’m planning to write is all wrong and I need to figure out the right thing.

And that turned out to be the case. I was stuck on a scene I had planned. I had it all outlined, had seen the “movie” in my head, and yet I couldn’t seem to make myself write it. Every time I sat down to try to write it, my brain would get distracted by random things and I couldn’t focus. Last night, I gave up and sat down with a pen and paper to see if I could outline the rest of the book and add more detail to that scene so it would be easy to write. That was when I realized that the scene doesn’t belong in the book at all. Not only does it not really add anything to the story, but it would change things for the next part I had planned, and that was why I was having trouble outlining that part.

The writing went a lot easier this morning when my brain agreed with me that I was on the right track. I should make a note of that. If I can’t seem to focus, if my brain wants to do absolutely anything but write, I need to look at what I’m planning to write and see if it really belongs in the book. Sometimes, I feel like my brain tries to get me out of the way so it can work things out without my conscious interference. It’ll send me searching for recipes for some dish I had once and have a sudden craving for or looking up books in the library’s collection or other kinds of busy work that suddenly seems urgent, and when that’s done and I get back to writing, I suddenly know exactly what I need to do.

So, next time I’m feeling scattered, I can tell myself that maybe this is part of the process. Though sometimes I do suspect that I’m just being scattered.

I’m not generally all that into sports. I used to occasionally watch football, but now I find it either too boring to pay attention to or too intense to enjoy watching (if I actually care about the outcome). I did go to every football game when I was in high school, since I was in the marching band, and for a couple of years I had season tickets for my university’s team. I’m kind of meh on baseball, but I enjoy the cultural ritual of going to a game. The local sports franchise I’ve watched most often is the Texas Rangers, who just won the World Series, and there is some pride and joy about that.

I went to my first Rangers game when I was in high school, at their old, old stadium. My dad took my brother and me to Arlington from our home in East Texas to make a day of it, and I brought a book to read during the boring parts, so I didn’t get invited to join those excursions again. I went to a lot of games at the old new ballpark (the one before the current one). I went with church groups a few times, we had at least one office outing to a game, and I had a friend who had season tickets who would sometimes bring me along. I like just about everything about going to a baseball game other than the game itself. I like the National Anthem, the player introductions, the various things they do to amuse the fans when it gets slow, like the dot races. I actually prefer minor-league baseball games to major league. I think it’s more fun watching people who have a dream and are mostly playing for the love of it than watching multimillionaires.

With the Rangers, you’ve got to love a plucky team of perennial losers. They’d made it to the World Series a couple of times about a decade ago and lost. Before that, any kind of big season was rare, and that history goes way back. This team used to be the Washington Senators, the team immortalized in the musical Damn Yankees, in which someone sells his soul to the devil to play for the team and beat the Yankees. Oddly, I’ve very seldom seen the Rangers lose. I seem to be a lucky charm for them. When I go to a game, they win. My friend with the season tickets was primarily a Yankees fan, so I wasn’t allowed to go with her to games when the Rangers were playing the Yankees (true story). I have not managed to capitalize on this to get free tickets to big games, though.

I must confess to not having watched much of the World Series. For the first couple of games, I was traveling and staying in a place without a TV (not that I would have watched). I watched part of one game with my parents when I got to their house on my way home. Otherwise, I’ve seen the result the next morning when I looked at the newspaper. I’ll admit that I got a bit teary-eyed when I saw in the paper yesterday morning that they’d won the Series. I even read all the coverage of it in the newspaper. There’s a big parade going on today, and I may watch it on TV. And then I will go back to not caring much about sports.