It’s so easy to get in a rut.  The older you get, the easier it is and the deeper the rut.  I’m especially guilty of this.  I am such a creature of habit on some things that I often find myself having trouble thinking outside of the box.

For instance, when it comes to going out to eat with my lovely and talented first wife, we find ourselves only thinking of the same handful of restaurants to visit.  It’s Wednesday?  Oh, then we must go to Mi Chula’s!  It’s Saturday morning, what do we want from Panera Bread?

It’s the same with listening to music.  According to my iTunes collection, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 days of stuff that I can listen to. 

Seriously.  40 days.  And that’s only the stuff that I have loaded into iTunes.  And, yet, when I feel like listening to something, I often find myself gravitating towards the same arm load of CD’s that I love listening to.

I know others who vacation much the same way.  They go to “x” place somewhere in this grand country, do the same things, ride the same rides, or see the same people and then complain about how much it cost and how tired they are.

And we wonder why we’re bored and restless.

To quote good ol’ Diamond David Lee Roth in The Trouble With Never: When was the last time you did something for the first time?  When have you ventured out to see a kind of movie that you wouldn’t ordinarily see?  How about seeing a stage show that you wouldn’t normally dream of seeing?  Perhaps you’ve never visited the elderly, infirmed or imprisoned.  Maybe you’ve never listened to classical music.  Maybe you’ve never walked barefoot in a field or tasted food from a foreign land or even visited the land of its origin.  Maybe it’s just as simple as doing your hair differently or not doing it at all.

There’s that old saying that says that variety is the spice of life.  I challenge you to do something different.  Maybe it’s the things I’ve just listed or maybe it’s as simple as listening – truly listening – to a different political point of view. Maybe switch to a different news channel to see what “the other side is saying”.  Perhaps you might want to chat with someone of a different faith – not so that you can “convert them” or they you – but to understand where they are coming from.

Maybe this time is the next time you do something for the first time.