Michael Robert Dyet's Blog, page 59

2101: A Google Odyssey

Hmmm, where will we find ourselves a hundred years after the sci-fi prophecy of Stanley Kubrick?

Ipsos Reid recently announced its list of the most influential brands in Canada for 2015. Admittedly, this announcement is not likely to garner as much attention as the Academy Award nominees or People magazine’s sexiest man alive.

Let me try and put it in context. In the sporting world, it is in roughly the same category as winning the Stanley Cup or the World Series or the Super Bowl. It is not quite as prestigious as winning a Nobel Prize but a cut above winning the Indy 500.

Some of you will disagree with my assessment, on the plus or minus side, depending on your particular slant on the world. Suffice to say, in business circles it is coveted title to hold.

So who are the top five influential brands in Canada for 2015? Drum roll please: #1) Google  #2) Microsoft  #3) Facebook  #4) Apple  #5) YouTube.

Google and Apple have been duking it out for the number one spot for the last decade although Apple has now slipped a few notches. It is worth noting that Google owns YouTube, acquiring it in 2006 for US $1.65 billion. So collectively Google holds down two of the top five spots.

It comes as no surprise that tech companies are the dominant players in this competition. But I do find it thought-provoking that three of the top five are exclusively virtual companies. You cannot put your hands on anything they sell. If you told me thirty years ago that this would be the case, I would have scoffed and said you were crazy.

It makes me wonder where the future may take us in this respect. I have toyed with the idea of writing a futuristic novel in which the economy is 100% based on virtual products. No stock on the shelves. No bricks and mortar stores. Or to put it another way, only virtual products in virtual stores that you shop for with virtual shopping carts.

In that scenario, one has to wonder how many decent paying jobs would actually exist. I envision a world in which perhaps .5% percentage of the population earns 99.5% of the income. Everyone else scratches out a meagre, subsistence living providing the commodities that the elite need to nourish their bodies but are not willing to pay much to acquire

In this dystopian vision, Google becomes the metaphor for a virtual world in which only the intangibles have value.

Warning: If anyone steals this idea and makes it into a hit movie – 2101: A Google Odyssey – I expect royalties. Be advised that I do not accept bitcoin.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

~ Subscribe to “Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make Me Go Hmmm” at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 . Instructions for subscribing are provided in the “Subscribe to this Blog: How To” instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week.

The Tip, Sleepy Hollow, the Dunes and Sanctuary

Hmmm, is that Pelee calling me through the bitter winds and icy grip of January?

Spring is still a couple of months away – not close enough yet to begin a countdown. But my thoughts are already turning to those May “fallout” days when warblers and flycatchers light up the trees with colour. To say I am impatient, would be understating the fact.

I deal with my impatience by calling up visions of the birdwatching mecca of this part of the country – Point Pelee Provincial Park. I pass through the gates by 7:00 am, with anticipation sweeping through me, and roll the windows down to hear the exuberant morning bird songs:

The wispy zee zee zee zoo zee or dreamy trees trees murmuring trees of a Black-throated Green Warbler… The plaintive, whistling pee-a-wee of a name-saying Eastern Wood Pewee… The breezy, flute call of a Swainson’s Thrush sliding upward as it wafts through the trees. These are the opening notes for the day’s symphony.

Protocol dictates that I drive the six kilometres to the nature center and catch the tram to the tip of the point. Here is where the birds make landfall after flying all night to cross the lake.

Walking the boardwalk up the middle of the tip is a breath of fresh air in every sense of the word. Warblers flit through the trees in their frenzy to feed. Yellows, Black-throated Blues, Magnolias, Yellow-Rumps, Redstarts, Blackburnians and Chestnut-Sideds will all be there.

And, if I’m lucky, perhaps a Golden-winged Warbler with its jaunty yellow cap, black throat and eye patch and flashy golden wing bars.

Halfway back to the nature centre, I set out on the swampy Woodland Trail. Here I am on the hunt for a Pelee specialty – the dipped-in-gold Prothonotary Warbler. Along the way I’ll be listening for the zeeeee-up of a Northern Parula and watching the swamp edges for a stealthy Northern Waterthrush.

Next up: Tilden Woods Trail hoping a Yellow-throated Vireo might be waiting overhead in the half-dead tree at the fork in the trail. Left at the fork and twenty minutes along brings me to the Chinquapin Oak Trail. I keep my ears tuned here for the busy beeee-bzzz of another Pelee specialty – a Blue-winged Warbler.

By mid-afternoon I am on the DeLaurier Homestead Trail – best bet for a Bluebird in the parking lot area and herons in the swamp ponds or the canal. Remembering to watch the tops of dead trees, or listening for the quick-three-beers, that signals a chunky Olive-sided Flycatcher

Late afternoon calls for a stroll through Sleepy Hollow and the Dunes to see if the winds have pushed a few warblers to the sheltered west side. And then, the marsh trail watching for Marsh Wrens popping up from the cattails or a glimpse of a head-pumping Moorhen.

On the way out, a quick peak into Sanctuary for no other reason than the tranquility the name calls to mind.

Point Pelee Provincial Park is a treasured opportunity to leave behind the trials and tribulations of modern life for a few days. It is a living, breathing and verdant metaphor for life as it is truly meant to be – a refuge for the world-weary that never fails to heal and restore.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

~ Subscribe to “Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make Me Go Hmmm” at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 . Instructions for subscribing are provided in the “Subscribe to this Blog: How To” instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week.

Morning Glory: Daylight Cycles of Renewal

Hmmm, should I try to crystal ball gaze into tomorrow or simply wrap myself in the glory of the day that is at hand?

I do not go out of my way to find bad news. Truth be told, there are days when I avoid the news reports altogether. On those one-fire-after-another days, self-preservation dictates that I tune out the negatives and point myself toward things that reenergize me.

But this week, a quick scan of social media sites, usually a low risk activity, hit me between the eyes with several disconcerting announcements.

Announcement #1: Retail giant Target Canada is shutting the door on all 133 of its stores across the country eliminating 17,600 jobs. This qualifies as an epic “cross the border” failure.

Less than two years, Target marched into Canada with huge expectations as a collective shudder went through Canadian-based department stores. Now Target is tucking tail, abandoning ship and applying for protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.

Announcement #2: Sony is pulling the plug (pardon the pardon) on its 14 retail locations in Canada putting 90 employees out in the cold. Online retail is apparently where it’s at now.

Announcement #3: Fashion Retailer Mexx Canada is shutting down its 95 stores across Canada – another 1,800 people soon to be without a paycheque.

My reactions to this triple-threat of bad news were entirely predictable:

Grateful that I have a job and a bit less inclined to gripe about how many fires I had to deal with today.

More than a little concerned that the Canadian economy may be poised to take a sharp downturn and worried about the trickledown effect on my job stability.

More convinced than ever that I do not have, or ever will have, the faintest clue about the operating principles of economics. (Reasonably priced gas is a bad thing? Stock markets go in the dumper because we can now afford to fill our gas tanks and pay our rent?)

There is only one takeaway from this set of circumstances that resonates with me. We live in an increasingly topsy-turvy, unpredictable, go-figure world where nothing is guaranteed beyond today. Forces are at play that few understand and fewer, if any, have the ability to exercise effective control over.

And so, my metaphor of choice for today is the Morning Glory flower. These unique flowers bloom in the morning and fold up by days end – living in simple, elegant, daylight cycles of renewal.

I aspire to play out my life like a Morning Glory flower: one day at a time, one bloom at a time. Seems like the only sane way to exist in a world where each day is more unpredictable than the one before.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

~ Subscribe to “Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make Me Go Hmmm” at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 . Instructions for subscribing are provided in the “Subscribe to this Blog: How To” instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week.

Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen and Northrop Frye

Hmmm, will we ever tire of the never-ending story of the battle between elemental forces that define the very nature of human existence?

I found myself unfortunately spending another holiday season nursing my temperamental back which objected to me bending down to untie my boots. I supposed there is a message in the way such a simple act can cause such havoc. But I would rather not purse that line of thought just now.

I passed some of my recovery time watching the Harry Potter series of movies on TV. Eight movies spanning ten years which ingrained Harry, Ron, Hermione, Professor Dumbledore, Lord Valdemort and the rest of the characters in our collective consciousness.

I have asserted previously, with all due respect to J.K. Rowling, that it was the mastery of Hollywood filmmakers that immortalized these characters. We became intimate friends with them as their larger than life images inhabited movie screens again and again.

The story behind the story is that these characters are recreations of archetypes that have existed for centuries and will live on for as long as humans walk the earth. A nod is necessary at this point to literary theorist Northrop Frye. I absorbed these concepts years ago while studying one of his classic works.

In the most basic terms, all stories – whether in written, theatrical or other forms – trace back to the elemental battle of good versus evil. These two opposing forces arguably give birth to all works of art which reflect back to us the nature of human existence.

We live in the flux of these forces which are expressed in timeless, diametrically opposed conditions – love and hate, freedom and oppression, charity and greed, and so on.

It is no coincidence that the most legendary movie franchises of the last few decades – Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings and The Hunger Games – all reconfigure and replay these human conditions.

They reflect the dramas that play out in our world from one generation to the next: the quest for the power and the struggle for the peace, the desire for harmony among men and the undermining desire for the triumph of one ideal over another.

Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, Frodo Baggins and Lord Sauron, Katniss Everdeen and President Snow are all metaphors for the struggle of love to overcome hate in the battle of good to defeat evil. It is the never-ending story and we are all characters in the narrative.

Life imitating art imitating life.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

~ Subscribe to “Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make Me Go Hmmm” at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 . Instructions for subscribing are provided in the “Subscribe to this Blog: How To” instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week.

Black Holes, Dog Years, SpaceTime and Geometric Horizons

Hmmm, was my three hours at the theatre time well spent or 21 years I’ll never get back?

Last weekend I went to see Interstellar. It proved to be an interesting and thought-provoking film. Admittedly, at a certain point I began to wonder if I the theatre itself had transformed into a “black hole” from which none of us would ever escape. Three hours is pushing the envelope for a movie goer’s attention span these days.

Then again, a significant part of the movie’s storyline took part inside a black hole where apparently one hour of time translates to seven years of earth time. (Kind of like dog years to the power of 100.) I suppose it is conceivable I was actually in the theatre for 21 years without realizing it. I did feel somewhat disoriented when I emerged.

Interstellar is based on some complex principles of physics. Confession: I was not particularly fond of physics in high school. Way too much mathematics involved and too many theories that circled around and overlap with each other.

But since I endured the full three hours of the movie (ironically, the spacecraft in the move was called the Endurance) I thought I would try to grasp a few of the principles involved.

Wikipedia defines black holes as “a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that no particle or light ray entering that region can ever escape from it”.

Hmm, spacetime? Back to Wikipedia. “Spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single interwoven continuum.” Mathematics again. Not my strong point.  Let’s just say that space and time hooked up one night at a bar and leave it at that.

Apparently, you can enter a black hole, but it is difficult or impossible to get out of it because space and time have gotten mixed up in one another. One has to wonder why a reasonably intelligent person would even venture into one given those conditions.

Next there is something about Euclidean space where space consists of three dimensions and time consists of one dimension. But somehow time crosses over and becomes a fourth dimension. Fourth Dimension? Weren’t they a music group? No, wait, that was The Four Seasons. I’m getting my dimensions mixed up with my seasons.

But back to black holes. The boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is apparently called the event horizon which is part of the theory of relativity which is the geometric theory of gravitation developed by Albert Einstein.

Geometry? Crap, we’re back to mathematics again! Is there a calculator I can punch all this into to make some sense of it?

It’s all Greek to me, which I suppose makes sense since physics is derived from Ancient Greek meaning knowledge of nature, or the natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through space and time… Now we’re back to space and time in the bar again. Those two should really just get a room and have at it.

Looks like I’ll never really grasp the sophisticated laws and principles of physics. Let’s just say that “black hole” is a metaphor for physics and vice versa, ad infinitum, till death do us part or the square root of tomorrow – whichever comes first.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

~ Subscribe to “Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make Me Go Hmmm” at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 . Instructions for subscribing are provided in the “Subscribe to this Blog: How To” instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week.

Apparitions of A Precocious Winter’s Evening

Hmmm, where to begin or to end in all that lies in wait for those who dare to look?

The first major snowstorm of the season is gracefully winding down. The wind has expired and the afternoon light has extinguished. The last of the handful of cars, bogged down in the driveway of my apartment building, have been unstuck and cleared away.

I’ll confess that the whining squeal of tires furiously spinning, while the car persists in sliding ever so slowly sideways, is still reverberating in my ears. Something about that frustrating occurrence echoes the times we live in. But that’s a story for another day.

Nightfall has settled quiet and serene over the city. A ghostly, gray-white glow remains in the sky as the last cold embers of the storm release a soft spray of white. I picture Old Man Winter brushing snow dust off his beard as he surveys his day’s work.

Street lamps, quivering like winter fireflies, cast feeble rings of light on the fresh snow. In the distance, a string of amber lights mark the path of cars traversing the highway as weary workers count the minutes until they reach the refuge of home and hearth.

Pine trees lining the grounds, the only living green left for life to gravitate towards, are laden with bear paws of snow. They bear the weight proudly as if to proclaim themselves kings and queens of the season. Who would dare to argue otherwise?

A curving trail of footprints winds through the pines and under the intricate, gray lacework of limbs and twigs on the deciduous trees that are long into their winter slumber. Where, I wonder, were the footsteps scurrying to, and did they reach their destination of sound mind and body?

Christmas lights glimmer and sparkle in random windows across the way. The blinking star atop a Christmas tree seems to wink especially at me. I look for a pattern, some hidden meaning or veiled truth, but cannot unravel the code.

The quilt of snow softens harsh angles and frozen shapes of mid-December. And yet, there seems something vaguely menacing in its pallid indifference. Or is that just a trick of the mind that has temporarily lost its way as it ventures forth in search of long sought answers? Perhaps it has wandered down a blind alley.

A solitary figure waits at the curb in the ashen glow of a streetlight where a great pine once stood. (Victim of last winter’s ice storm.) Who is he waiting for as the cold insinuates itself into his bones? Has his friend forgotten or abandoned him? Or perhaps, perchance, he waits in hope for someone new?

A ribbon of smoke curls and furls from the rooftop smokestacks. Rises in a small flourish, billows and rolls, dissolves into the ash of the night sky. Repeating the dance ever and endlessly with a patience I cannot help but envy.

How shall I choose just one metaphor from all that I behold? How glorify one at the expense of the others? Better instead to pull back my mind’s eye and take the panoramic view. All of life’s vast repertoire, the joy and the sorrow, the plenty and the scarcity, the hope and the despair, are here – mirrored in the apparitions of this precocious winter’s evening.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

~ Subscribe to “Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make Me Go Hmmm” at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 . Instructions for subscribing are provided in the “Subscribe to this Blog: How To” instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week.

 

Climate Change: A Monkey Wrench in the Delicate Balance of Nature

Hmmm, will instinct prevail and save ten of nature’s most delicate creatures?

I generally wrap up my bird watching season by early November. But diehard birders keep going all winter. One of the attractions of winter bird watching is finding the occasional bird that should be hundreds or thousands of miles south in warmer climates. These exceptions to the rule delight birdwatchers.

Right now there are ten Warblers – small, colourful and hyperactive birds that head south for the winter – comprising six species hanging out in a park in Oakville. To be specific, they are:

Yellow-rumped Warbler: Blue-gray above and white below with wing bars, a black face (males only) and a distinctive yellow rump. Birders affectionately refer to them as butter-butts. They are always on one of the first warblers to arrive in the spring and one of the last to leave in the fall.

Northern Parula: A handsome bluish warbler with a yellow throat (males have a brown bar across the throat) and a greenish-yellow patch on the back. They are known for their distinctive rising trill call that trips over the top: zeeeeeee-up!

Tennessee Warbler: One of the drabber members of the normally colourful warbler family.  Mostly green on the back with a pale white eye stripe. They make up for their plain appearance with a distinctive, staccato call: ticka ticka ticka ticka swit swit chew chew chew chew.

Nashville Warbler: A personal favourite of mine. Olive green above, with a grayish head and white eye-ring, accentuated by bright yellow on the breast. It is one of the earlier Warblers to appear in the spring and always brings a smile to my face.

Orange-crowned Warbler: This dingy olive green warbler seldom lives up to its promising name. The thing orange crown by which they are named is rarely visible. Identifying one is more be default than by distinguishing marks. Too dingy for any other warbler? Must be an orange-crowned.

Wilson’s Warbler: Pretty much always one of, if the not the last, warbler species to arrive in the spring. Bright yellow below and greenish above. The males are easy to distinguish by their round black cap. If it’s a female, you’ll need to listen for its rapid little chatter – chi chi chi chi chi chet chet – to make a definitive identification.

All six of these species should be on their wintering grounds now anywhere from the Southern US to Central America and the West Indies. There is a chance that they will eventually get with the game plan and head south. But if the weather takes a sudden turn to sub-zero temperatures, they will all likely die as they are not adapted to that kind of weather.

The disturbing fact is that these “exceptions to the rule” are happening more and more often. Climate change is very likely the culprit. The late arrival of winter and unusually warm December temperatures seem to be messing with their migratory instinct.

These ten warblers are perilous metaphors for climate change and how it is throwing a monkey wrench into the delicate balance of nature. It may be a treat to see them in December. But the truth is we should be more disturbed than delighted.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

~ Subscribe to “Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make Me Go Hmmm” at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 . Instructions for subscribing are provided in the “Subscribe to this Blog: How To” instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week.

 

Random Act of Metaphor: Battleship Cloudbank on the Southern Horizon

Hmmm, is victory in life measured in the hand of might or in the virtue of second sight?

We all have them these days. Those rollercoaster, batten down the hatches weeks when all you really want is to get to Friday evening with your sanity intact. A weekend snowstorm sounds like just the ticket because it means you have an excuse not to step out the door.

And so, you head to work on Friday morning wondering what bullets you will have to dodge today. Ahead of you on the southern horizon you see a battleship gray cloudbank. Not wispy, drifting and shifting clouds. A solid, unbroken bank of ominous, imposing clouds hugging the skyline. Think the invading alien spaceship in the movie Independence Day.

Perhaps, you think, the universe is giving you a message: Turn around, go back home and burn up a sick day. But then you see what at first escaped your notice. There is texture and dimension in the cloudbank. Subtle layers and sculpted edges that show the hand of an unseen and benevolent artist. Secrets like within it that are worth enduring to discover.

A battleship cloudbank on the southern horizon – a random act of metaphor to remind us that the battles we wage are more often won by second sight and patient discernment than by matching raw strength with imposing might.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

~ Subscribe to “Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make Me Go Hmmm” at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 . Instructions for subscribing are provided in the “Subscribe to this Blog: How To” instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postngs once a week.

 

The Hunger Games: More Fact than Fiction?

Hmmm, are we closer to the world of The Hunger Games than we care to admit?

$26 billion is the net worth of the wealthiest person in Canada – David Thomson of the Thomson family. The family owns multinational publishing and multimedia giant Thomson Reuters which operates in more than 60 countries.

I worked for Thomson Reuters for a number of years. I admit to being a bit equivocal about that part of my career. I was reasonably well paid for my efforts at the time so I have no complaints. But having contributed, albeit in a very small way, to David Thomson’s wealth means I also played a part in the widening wealth gap in this country.

The top one percent of Canadian earners bring home 10% of all income in this country. It is a very top heavy pyramid with the top five being outrageously wealthy. The next four: 

Galen Weston: $10.4 billion – from his food and retail empire
Arthur, James & John Irving: $7.85 billion – from a range of business interests including oil, forestry, paper products and transportation
Edward Rogers and family: $7.6 billion – from media giant Rogers Communication
Jim Pattison: $7.39 billion – from variety of industries including TV and radio stations, car dealerships, grocery store chains, magazine distribution and real estate development

Statistics are not really my thing. But it is hard to ignore the fact that the bottom 30 per cent of Canadians account for just 1 per cent of the wealth.

And by all accounts, the rich are getting richer. Recent media reports indicate that the net worth of the top 10 per cent of Canadians grew by 42 per cent in recent years. At the same time, the net worth of the bottom 10 per cent of Canadians shrunk by 150 per cent.

I consider myself very fortunate that I sit somewhere in the middle of this very long spectrum. I am leagues away from being rich but earn enough to be comfortable even with some financial setbacks along the way.

I know next to nothing about economics and the dynamics that come into play in these equations. No doubt there are those who will argue that the billionaires at the top of the list play an essential role in providing employment for hundreds of thousands of Canadians. But it is hard, in my mind, to justify the amount they skim off the top in the process.

The only way I can visualize this process is through the realm of metaphor. If I think of Canada as an ocean, it means that a handful of Killer Whales at the top of the food chain are progressively gobbling up more of the ocean’s resources. The other fish, in descending order of size and ferocity, are competing for less and less of those dwindling resources.

In that state of affairs, it seems almost inevitable that we will eventually arrive at a Hunger Games scenario – unless each of us takes responsibility for doing our small part to begin to reverse and balance the food chain. Waiting for someone use to light the torch is dangerous for we may not have as much time as we think.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

~ Subscribe to “Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make Me Go Hmmm” at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 . Instructions for subscribing are provided in the “Subscribe to this Blog: How To” instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week.

True Confessions of a Habit Junkie

Hmmm, what is a habit junkie to do when the fates conspire against him?

I will readily confess that I am a creature of habit. Certain aspects of my behaviour are as predictable as the Maple Leafs missing the playoffs. (Sorry Leaf fans, couldn’t resist.) Some of my habits are good ones – others, not so much. Quite honestly, I am not entirely sure where the dividing line is.

A case in point: A stop at Tim Hortons is an integral part of my morning routine. The Tims I patronize is conveniently located just around the corner from where I work. On some days, my medium double-double is waiting for me when I get to the front of the line. Does that make the Tims employees enablers of my habit?

But to my chagrin, my Tim Hortons location of choice I is being renovated. They have put a Tims trailer in the parking lot in an effort to hold onto their customers for the month the renovations will require. Unfortunately, it is a poor substitute. My choices: Get in the lengthy drive-through line or stand out in the cold in the lineup to the trailer window.

I tried switching to another Tims location at the halfway point on my trip to work. It seemed like a plausible way to cling to my morning routine with minimal variation. But a couple of days shuffling along in a line of 20 to 30 people, glancing at my watch every three minutes, quickly discouraged that solution.

The problem is another habit of mine is always arriving early wherever I go. So my attempt to find a workaround for my morning Tims stop disrupted another aspect of my morning routine.

Matters were further complicated yesterday morning when a water main break forced me to alter my route to work .I walked into the office with only two minutes to spare before my target arrival time. I am starting to seriously suspect that there is a conspiracy afoot to foil my well-oiled morning routine!

There is always coffee ready and waiting in the kitchen area of my workplace. The practical side of my brain says: So just make do with the office coffee for a few weeks. Problem solved. The habit addicted side of my brain responds: But it isn`t Tims coffee. It tastes different. And it messes with my routine. I like my routine. It makes me happy.

I could, of course, buy a can of Tims coffee, brew a cup or two in the morning and bring it with me in a travel mug. But that would play havoc with my before-I-walk-out-the-door routine. Everything would be totally out of whack from the get-go. I get antsy even thinking about it.

Alas, there seems to be no way to jerry rig my morning routine to maintain a semblance of order. For the next month I will be living out the metaphor of a fish out of water.

I can hear you saying: Roll with it. Change is good. In the words of The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper: Change is never fine, they say it is, but it`s not.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

~ Subscribe to “Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make Me Go Hmmm” at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 . Instructions for subscribing are provided in the “Subscribe to this Blog: How To” instructions page in the right sidebar. If you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly to my page for postings once a week.