​When you are stuck in a routine, how do you break it? Is this something you care to do?
 
I find the idea of why we seem to reject breaking a routine to be an interesting conversation topic. Keeping a routine threads through much of our lives – from getting up in the morning, to our social lives, to how we commute, to restaurants we eat at or vacations we take.

We find something we like. We do it again. It’s simple. We are rewarded by consistency. We know what we’re getting.
 
Recently, while taking our dogs for a morning walk, my wife and I discussed this. One of us had just gone for a blood drawing for our annual physical. This entails a MINOR inconvenience at most. You don’t eat breakfast in the morning until after your blood is drawn. No biggie, right?

Then, why did both of us whine about it on our walk? We couldn’t have our morning coffee. We couldn’t down breakfast at our usual time. We had to break a minor routine, and we both felt slightly thrown out of whack by that. A bit cranky.
 
It’s a good example of why so many of us prefer the sameness of the familiar. Another good example of how we like to take on similar tasks in a specific order is how you work out.
 
My wife and I both work out early in the morning. And, we both get irritated when we’re humming along from one weight machine to another, then bam, someone is sitting on the next machine we want.

That alone doesn’t get us revved. But, if that individual chooses to do six sets of increasing reps, checking their phone for songs or messages in between while also contemplating the origins of the universe, you start to get a bit exasperated. You want to finish what you started, move on to the next series of exercises, and this individual is keeping you from your objective. So, you internalize how upset you are, work around the inconvenience.

That workout machine dawdler is another great example of how we don’t like to change routines. Think about how simple it is to just move onto another machine. Does it really matter what order you do bench presses, arm curls, leg extensions? No. Yet, you want to do them in the order you are used to.
 
We commute down the same route most days we go to work. Perhaps that is the fastest, straightest or has the least stop lights. We’ve figured that out. We want that routine. We don’t want to explore or change to see some new sights or a different angle of the sun.
 
Breaking the routine isn’t hard, and it has many benefits – you see the world differently; you refresh your thought processes; perhaps you meet someone new or experience a unique sensation; you challenge yourself. When you think about it, breaking your routine has more positives than keeping your routine.
 
As humans, we are driven by the familiar, the comfortable. I would argue because we are also explorers at heart that we should take moments to make ourselves uncomfortable. Drive a new route, see what you find. Don’t eat those those barbecued ribs every time at your favorite restaurant. Check out a new dish. Taste it, savor it, maybe spit it out. Or, maybe it becomes your new go-to. You won’t know until you choose to break your routine. 

​Our Sunday newspaper carrier has recently changed and because of this we no longer get the paper early in the morning when my wife and I would typically pick it up at the end of our driveway after returning from walking the dogs. Initially, this irritated us. Actually, it continued to irritate me for months.
 
That is, until I accepted that reality and learned to find the positive. Don’t consider this a nirvana moment. No way. Just a little bit about choosing how you want to respond to something that doesn’t go your way and you probably can’t do anything about, then determining there is some good involved.
 
What later Sunday morning newspaper delivery now means to me is more relaxation time on Sunday evening. Getting done whatever needs getting done during the day is followed by spreading my legs out on the living room couch, sinking back into the pillows, nestling my reading glasses on my beak, crinkling the pages and snapping the newspaper sheets to attention. AAAHHHHHHH! The day is done, no worries, now I can take some time to peruse what’s going on in the world with more depth and attention.
 
This teaches me several things, and brings back memories – a bit of a nostalgia tour. Way back when newspapers meant a lot more than the seem to mean today -- and EGADS, some cities even had TWO morning newspapers (or more) or a morning AND an afternoon paper -- it was the primary forum for keeping you up-to-date on events in your community, state, country, world. You waited for the news, it meant something to you, and you had to actively read to learn.
 
The relevancy of the newspaper plopping on your driveway every morning (or afternoon) was that it started your day. Catch up on the things you wanted/needed to catch up on, eat breakfast, head out into the world. Not having the paper delivered on time taught me that I don’t need to consume the news first thing in the morning, or on social media or the internet during the day. It can wait.
 
That’s a good lesson for me. Slow down. Pace yourself. You don’t have to overwhelm yourself with thoughts, facts and opinions instantaneously as they appear electronically. Give yourself time for perspective. Savor your day without the news slamming you in the face.
 
Relaxation is another positive of the later Sunday night newspaper reading. There’s something about finishing your day and topping it off with the newspaper in a relaxed setting that helps you unwind. For some reason, you just don’t get as amped up about all the problems exposed in the pages. You ponder instead. You put the paper down and consider options, wondering about what could be done differently.
 
When the cat jumps on your lap while you’re reading Sunday nights, that’s a bonus. When he kneads with his paws and stars purring, that adds to the experience. That doesn’t happen in the morning.
 
The world doesn’t have to be 24/7/365. We CHOOSE to make it that way. You can isolate yourself from the daily imaging, video, opinion onslaught and then pick up the newspaper in the evening, and you know what? The world still spins. Maybe something new happened that day between the time you woke and time you ate dinner. But, did it matter in your life?
 
Waiting until the evening helps you unwind from mass news. I thank newspaper delivery person for starting me down this path. 

​The headlines get hotter as the temperature gets hotter. We read and hear about rising world temperatures and have to wonder, “what will next year bring?” Our human condition seems to be one of concern, but at the same time ignoring our complicity in generating carbon emissions.
 
What can you do? What should you do?
 
Rather than wringing our collective and singular hands, we can all act. Every individual can take specific steps to change behavior and actions. Those steps can be small or big.
 
If you own a low MPG vehicle, like a large pickup truck, the next time you purchase a vehicle, make it one that gets improved mileage. Shoot for an average of 30 MPG minimum. It can be done. Force the hands for the auto makers.
 
If you’re handing down a vehicle to one of your kids who is just starting to drive, make it a hybrid. Lower emissions, better gas mileage on average than pure gasoline-fired autos.
 
Do other people head the same direction that you do for work? Consider car pooling.
 
A good friend has gone to a vegetarian diet in the past three years after heavily researching what steps an individual can take to reduce their personal carbon footprint and finding that eliminating meat from your diet is the biggest positive step you can take. Maybe you don’t want to totally cut out meat, so take steps to reduce your intake incrementally. See where that goes.
 
Stop mowing your grass so much. Take some of your grass out of commission and plant other native vegetation or create some artistic structure that fires your creativity and gets compliments from the neighbors. That’s fun.
 
Walk. Ride your bike. Even more fun, buy an e-bike. We had the opportunity to ride one on a trip recently, and what a joy it was to pedal longer distances with less effort. Put baskets on the e-bike. Run errands with it. Pedal to the supermarket, library, post office, or your other local stops effortlessly with the e-boost.
 
Plant diverse trees on your property. We have added 30-40 different types of trees on our property over the past seven years. Some didn’t make it, so the number that will mature is not that high. Keep planting. If one type of tree won’t make it in your climate zone, find the best trees for your area and put those in instead. Experiment. Appreciate the hard exercise and sweat equity you put into digging and depositing dirt, dropping the tree roots into the hole, covering it up and tamping it down.
 
No one is impotent when it comes to actions they can take to lower our world carbon output. We all have influence. We all should take steps. Don’t put it off.
 
There has never been a perfect world, nor will there ever be. The human species has always been faced with evolutionary challenges. Our blessing and our curse are our ability to think ahead and create tools to enhance our lives. We’ve built a degree of leisure and ease into our lives at the expense of rapidly changing the ecosystem which sustains us in a very short period of time by historical standards.
 
Our brains and ability to develop and deploy technology are at the root of finding the solutions to the byproducts we create. It’s on all of us. We must commit and act. Now is the time.

​This past weekend, I chowed down on a Dairy Queen (DQ) large chocolate dipped cone. Yum!
 
On the drive home, as the chocolate collapsed and sent a sheet or two into the fabric of the car seat, and as the soft ice cream melted and had to be rapidly licked to keep it from dripping on my lap, my passenger (a close friend) decided to give a philosophical analysis of eating the DQ chocolate dipped cone. He had obviously thought about this a lot.
 
He laid out the emotions of consumption – the specific initial crunch of the chocolate, feeling the thin layers crinkle, crack and fall apart, then the ice cream beginning its route towards a full meltdown. The senses you get, the reward and mixture of the two tastes and competing textures that make this cone so special.
 
Then, he followed up with the evolution of eating this special treat. How you have to speed up just a bit because the cone wants to get ahead of you in falling apart. You increase your speed, licking the soft serve, crunching the chocolate layers, getting a wee bit concerned that you’re going to miss out, that YOU JUST MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING DRIP ON YOU, DAMMIT, so you up your game.
 
You’ve become the pro by this point, using your expertise in DQ cone eating to dominate the treat, swirling it from the sides, sucking on the larger portions that could topple and fall, and licking off the juices seeking to contaminate your clothing. This takes confidence and diligence as you conquer the cone, using your prior knowledge to keep on top of the collapsing dessert.

At this point, you may be halfway through consumption. The chocolate has fallen (mostly). You’ve mounded the vanilla in the middle, creating a decent-sized hill. But there’s still a ways to go, to savor the bitty morsels left of the chocolate, to shape the soft serve with your tongue.
 
You continue to stay focused. You must, or things melt too quickly, and your clothes catch the debris.
 
Attacking the cone is coming into sight. You close in by mounding the vanilla ice cream repeatedly so that it stays within the contours of the cone, setting you up for the final push.
 
Yes, the soft serve is flattened. When you bite the cone, savor that first burst of the flaky carbo encrusted lightness, you know nothing will dribble out. You chew, the vanilla flavor swirling with the cone and a hint of chocolate. Nirvana!
 
Then, there’s the middle bite of the cone. OH, YEAH! Full mixture of the soft serve flavor and texture with the flavor and texture of the cone. It takes your emotions to another level. You don’t want this to end.

But, it must. There’s that last tiny piece of cone, with the soft serve wedged fully into it. Should you wait and make it two bites or ram the whole thing in your mouth so your cheeks bulge?
 
We know the answer to that. Smack your lips. Smile. Breathe deeply through your nose so you thoroughly let the tastes go to your buds. You’ve conquered the large chocolate dipped cone at DQ, a conquest, and emotional and philosophical experience. Next time you don’t have to think about it. Enjoy the ride. 

​A lot has been written over the past 5-10 years about emotionally irate parents who go to the sporting events of their offspring and choose to rant at the officials blowing the whistles, throwing the flags or making the balls and strikes calls. The theme that runs through many of these news stories is that the behavior of these parents is leading to a nationwide shortage of sports officials.
 
This past weekend, I had the privilege to serve as a clinician at a basketball referee camp in Lancaster, PA, helping officials with constructive feedback to improve the skill sets and potentially rise to a level where they get the opportunity to work DII or DIII college basketball that. That meant a LOT of basketball games over two days, tired kids, worn out officials, cranky parents. A toxic brew for a parent to mouth off. For the most part that did not happen.

This column is not about out-of-control parents. Instead, it’s about how to deal with people who can go crazy over a game and cause problems for game management, officials, players and even coaches. This is not a recipe. But, it is a good story.
 
We were at the next-to-last game Saturday night. Two opponents – big, fast, strong and physical – were playing each other. A lot of fouls had been called. Most people in the gym were probably ready to go to bed. One mother decided she wanted to tell us what to do as we sat on the sidelines, observing, taking notes to give feedback to the three officials on the court so that they build their skill sets and become better officials in the years ahead.
 
She approached my co-clinician and me, telling us in no uncertain terms that the officials were not calling enough fouls, that too much contact was occurring AND that the game was taking too long. The contradiction of those concepts (calling more fouls causes the game to go longer, so reducing the foul count would cause even more contact, something she did not want) caused us to look at each other with wry smiles. She asked us if we were the ones observing before she went on this tirade. We acknowledged this, yes.
 
When someone goes off like this, it’s typically about blowing off steam. In today’s world you must be very careful in how you handle these emotionally charged situations.
 
She stood there, giving us the evil eye. My teammate on the sidelines said, “Thank you.”
 
I looked at her. She glared.
 
Again, he said, “Thank you.”
 
No response.
 
In a firm voice, he said “thank you” a third time. She huffed off.
 
I’m not sure if my partner had that practiced response or it came off the top of the head, but it worked perfectly, and I will remember it for myself for future use. I learn all the time in these situations how to defuse angry, frustrated, emotionally-on-edge people who want to be heard. It’s difficult. It can be tense. But, with training and examples like I got from my partner that night, you can be much better prepared for the next time.
 
All of us need more of these tools in today’s world, where too many people appear on edge because of perceived slights. Saying “thank you” can go a long way towards defusing these potential confrontations.

​If we need another example to demonstrate our interconnected world, it’s the smoke meandering down into the United States from Canada the past few weeks, fouling air for thousands of miles for multiple days in a row. Just this past week, Milwaukee and other upper Midwest cities were listed as being in the top five worst cities in the world for air quality. That wasn’t surprising if you lived under the smoke attack.
 
Tuesdays, I play in a 62+ baseball league, and as I got on the highway towards the fields (south and west of Milwaukee), the bog of smog/smoke overwhelmed your vision. Didn’t seem too bad the first few miles. Then, five miles later, you couldn’t see landmarks in the distance. By arrival time at the ballpark, you couldn’t see two miles ahead of the car.
 
After the game, it was worse. Visibility was down to half-a-mile. You could smell it, taste it. It affected your eyes and mucus membranes. This smoke blanket lasted for three days.
 
With wind changes, the jarring change in weather lifted. You could see with near-clarity, the sky actually blue. In retrospect, as these types of events jar our daily lives, you think how connected we are to the world environment and how we all better rethink our daily lives to take personal steps to reduce our individual carbon footprints. Otherwise, these events will worsen, becoming more cataclysmic as years become decades.
 
The smoke invasion also got me thinking of how we all have to remove whatever blinders we have and look more and more at the global impacts of how we live. Covid was a big indicator that demonstrated borders don’t exist. Living in one country or another ensures nothing in terms of safety.
 
A virus, like smoke, could care less where it goes. It just migrates along wind currents, ultimately affecting people thousands of miles away and on separate continents. Read up on the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state in 1980 to see how quickly and how far the volcanic ash plume spread, and you will understand how there’s no wall to build for protection.
 
Even today, we still have not effectively fully recovered a steady supply chain following the Covid-related shutdowns across the world. It’s difficult to find a new car. If you need parts to repair your current car, they can take more time to locate and get to your local repair shop. Logistics are not as seamless as they were four years ago, and it’s a global disruption.
 
As global population continues to increase and everyone is looking to get a slice of the cake, the pinching down will only continue. Grapes go in short supply if a weather crisis happens in Chile. The bird flu drives up the price of chicken. None of these are issues affecting solely one country.

We are a world without borders when it comes to weather, pollution, food, manufacturing. This will become increasingly apparent over the years ahead. We need to pay close attention and prepare more methodically for change if we want to reduce the chaos. If not, the lurching from crises to crises only expands.

​Several years back I worked with a guy whose wife was at the forefront of developing AI-type (artificial intelligence) writing programs. It sounded scary for my field as a journalist/reporter/writer.
 
He described AI’s abilities (five years ago) in terms of writing simple stories and press releases. Input the data, set it loose. Then it turned out the product.
 
Given the death knell for print journalists the past 30-40 years, as magazines evaporated and newspapers merged and slashed, AI sounded like another bell gonging to put our profession into the graveyard. That appears to have accelerated in recent months with AI grabbing headlines and investment gurus touting the abilities and life-changing effects of the technology.
 
Technology has pretty much always leapfrogged with unintended consequences. Stuff happens that we can’t predict. Jobs go away. New ones are created. Some people decry the change. Others embrace it. AI will cover all those bases, and possibly more.
 
What AI won’t do (most likely) is generate something new and original. It has to work from the inputs that it is given – the data programmed into it. It will imitate things that came before it. Humans have a different role.
 
What we have to figure out, it seems to me, and the big question given the more repetitive actions AI can take over (even in intellectual and white collar work, like writing), is this: “What does this means humans should be DOING?” Where is our time valuably invested?
 
If AI automation takes over, it pushes humans into another role. What’s it gonna be?
 
We all need to work. We all also need to make money in our increasingly monetized world where wealth is incredibly centralized in smaller and smaller percentages of the population. The recent merging of the LIV-PGA golf tour is but one more example of how money rules and how those with wealth (and often dubious backgrounds) bankroll events and jobs. Will that become the model for humans in an AI-generation world? It will depend on those holding the wealth. Do those individuals care about the planet and the livelihoods of people in general or are they out to hoard their bucks and make sure they line the pockets of their other uber-wealthy buddies?
 
There is a lot of anger and hurt in the world today trying to preserve things the way they were. That’s not the path as AI assaults us. Instead, using intelligence to grow the human species in terms of our roles as guardians (until some other species takes the top of the ladder) necessitates we look forward. What’s next? Where can AI help us and the world ecosphere develop in ways that utilize our skills and ENHANCE (not just preserve) the environment we rely on that allows us to exist physically? Those are the questions.
 
Who answers them, and how they answer will determine our future. Who holds those reins? How much input will the little person have? I don’t know. But we’re going to find out. And, there’s gonna be a lot of chaos. Hopefully our curiosity and intellect and push to build and innovate – things that makes us human and different from other species – wins out. AI cannot duplicate that.

​If you read a lot of books, how do you decide which ones to pick up next? There are many ways to choose, but have you found a reasonably accurate way to determine quality in the writer, plot, reporting, research, narrative?
 
For a long time, it was a crapshoot for me. I listened to friends and respected their views and gave something they recommended a shot. Sometimes it would be like eating a perfect pizza and other times I’d spit it out like liver and onions.
 
Book reviews you read from the experts are a bad idea. It took me years to figure that out.
 
The simple reason is they are paid to review books, and that means for the most part they need to write a good review. They are skewed. Do you ever see a one-star review in the newspaper of a book that’s been reviewed? Nope.
 
I wish I’d figured that out many years ago because it would have saved me a lot of wasted time reading novels that I struggled through, hoping to find those nuggets of worth the reviewer assured us were in there. Now, I discount all reviewers. If they give it a five-star, drop at least one of those stars off their rating, perhaps two. They are PR machines to promote the writer and their book – paid to make the author look good and sell their books. Remember that.
 
When Google and Amazon came along, that seemed like a good thing – more populist. Still, you need to know how to use the tools they offer.

Going mindlessly down their rabbit holes leaves you where you started. Every book is rated 4.3 (more or less) out of 5. Or so it seems. Very rare to find above a 4.5 ranking and similarly rare to find one below 4.
 
Which means those ratings are padded. Friends of the author go online and write good stuff. Someone who hates the book occasionally adds their voice and drives the rating down, but that tends to be unusual.
 
What about Oprah or Reese Witherspoon or other book clubs? While not experts, you can have some success picking up their recommendations if you know the type of material that gets you revved up. If not, then this becomes another useless enterprise.
 
What’s come to me the past few years as I’ve honed my ability to sift through reviews and determine what ignites my curiosity and engages me page after page is averaging out the comments written in the Amazon review section and trusting our library people regarding top new choices they put in the front area (similar to trusting those reviews written by low-paid book loving employees at independent bookstores).
 
Here's how my averaging system works. I challenge you to try it.
 
Typically, the first several Amazon reviews are hot, five stars. Give them a quick glance. Determine which ones are BS and which are written from the heart. Get a sense of the plot, themes, intensity, what’s supposed to hold your attention.
 
Know yourself. Know what you like, what bores you and what turns you off. Then head to the bad reviews, the one- or two-star reviews. Here’s where you get reality. People vent. You find out what’s horrible or doesn’t make sense or is petty. Whatever. Let this seep into your personal review brain.
 
Average these good ones out with the bad ones and meld it into what you know about yourself – your likes and dislikes. WALLA! You have it. Your personal review system designed and catered to your reading style identified to select books most likely to hold your attention and have you make a recommendation. Next thing you know, you’ll be the sought-after reviewer.

​When does intellect defeat instinct? Or, conversely, when does instinct win out?
 
When you play senior baseball (or, if you remain physically active and competitive into your 60s), these questions come to mind. The reason they do is because so many players injure themselves trying to do things their bodies command them not to do.
 
Your instincts tell you to run hard to first base. You do. You pull a groin muscle.
 
A ball is hit to you in the outfield. You run and dive. You separate your shoulder. Done for the season.

These things happen in senior baseball. Repeatedly. Bodies over the age of 55 don’t want to steam into second base and perform a pop-up slide. Your body wants to jog to second base (or lumber, or trot, pick your verb). But not sprint.
 
In our league, over and over we see and hear of players getting injured as their instincts defeat their intellect. Your mind tells you to slow down. Instead, if you hit a slow roller to third base, you take off out of the batters box, presuming you can leg out an infield single. Instead, you tear your hamstring.
 
There’s a friend of mine playing in one of these senior baseball leagues and he is currently out of commission with a groin pull. He tried to run too hard, more than his body could handle. When we recently discussed this, he said something to the effect, “I KNOW I shouldn’t have done that, but I just couldn’t stop myself.” He couldn’t overrule instinct with his mind. The innate desire to get to first base took over.
 
Last season in our 55+ team, we got three new players to join us, all of them under the age of 60. Young bucks for the league. By the end of the season, all three were injured and unable to play. One tore his rotator cuff. Another pulled a groin muscle. And the third just generically messed up his arm so he couldn’t throw any more.

When players join our team, they get positive reinforcement to NOT overdo it. DON’T sprint as fast as you can to first base. BE CAREFUL if you choose to dive for a ball. Slide into bases AT YOUR OWN RISK.

The emphasis is on: “YOU COULD HURT YOURSELF!” The implication is you must analyze the situation, use your intellect, and not take risks that punish your body.

As the three players from our team last year demonstrated though, it is much easier to SAY you’re going to slow down and be smart about your body than it is to actually play that way.
 
You have to wonder if this goes back to neanderthal days when your senses had to be active and alarmed at all times to respond to predator threats. You had to go zero to a hundred at any time. Similar to baseball, where you are sedentary and suddenly you’re expected to explode to full speed.

With age, you can’t physically do that anymore. Something has to give, and it’s usually a muscle, limb, tendon, ligament or bone.
 
There are no answers to the instinct vs. intellect discussion. You can only work to engage your brain to still your body and hope the message gets through. Sometimes it does, but that’s when you get thrown out stealing second.