Daily writing prompt

What are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like?

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Since having gastric bypass surgery I have been very reliant on routine. I feel completely out of sorts if I don’t follow a specific routine on a day to day basis. I was never like that before the surgery, but since I have become a creature of routine. I’m weird like that now.

I get up, put some clothes on, grab my laptop, and head to the cellar. I pick something to watch, a TV show or a movie or a queue of youtube videos. Today is was the season (series?) finale of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. I then jog (pronounced yog) in place for 45 minutes. That closes my Apple Watch Activity app’s exercise ring for the day and it also sort of wakes me up. It kicks my ass too, but it gives me a little sense of accomplishment to start the day. After that it depends on whether it’s a work in the office day or not. If it is not then I eat breakfast and that closes out the first hour of my day. If it is, I prefer to have my breakfast in the car on the way to work so I just head upstairs and take a shower or pack up my computer and my lunch/breakfast and all of that.

I do this seven days a week. Any day that I don’t do it is a mess, mentally speaking. Like I said, I am weird like that now. It’s a whole new world, I guess.

Daily writing prompt

Which aspects do you think makes a person unique?

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Is there a single thing that leads to uniqueness? Yes, I think, but it’s not something we can see or interact with. It’s not a trait or a characteristic either behavioral or physical. I am not the only tall, red haired, green eyed guy with a weight problem that required surgery to alleviate (or at least temporarily delay), who is a step father to two adults, who is married to the love of his life. There probably aren’t a lot of us who meet all of those things, but there are definitely more than one. None of those things, together or singularly, make me unique.

So what does make us unique? Easy. DNA. Genetics. To misquote Breaking Bad, as most of us do, Science, Bitch! Forgive me for feeling all sciency on this the most holy of christian holidays, but only one of the two topics is actual truth and it ain’t the one about the guy who is his own father who died and came back to life to save humanity from himself. Nope. Not even close.

Right then, let’s all take our unique selves and work our way through our unique days. Happy unique Sunday, everyone.

Daily writing prompt

If you could have something named after you, what would it be?

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Why the hell would anyone in their right mind name something after a dope like me?

Given that I was named after my father you might think I had wanted to name a son, if I ever had one, after me. Hi, I am Robert, Jr and here is my devilishly handsome, hyper intelligent son (who clearly takes after his mother) Robert, III. Nope. No way. I would never subject any son I might have had to anything like that. Let’s just say that I would have lived through it so he would not have had to. I don’t have a biological son though (I have a step son who I love as much as anyone could ever love a biological son) so it’s a moo point. You know, it’s like a cow’s opinion. It’s moo.

I’ve seen a few people say they would like to have a street named after them. That’s a really good take. Unfortunately, I have a very common first name and a slightly less common but still very common last name. That means there are already streets in most New England towns with those names. Too late, Robbie. Too late.

As a guitar player one fun option would be to have a guitar named after me. I’d have to be super famous for that, but why not consider it? My favorite guitar is arguably the most famous signature guitar there is, named after it’s co-designer and jazz legend who is even more legendary as an inventor of audio recording devices and techniques, Les Paul. Most of the major guitar manufacturers make signature models of their common guitars or make signature models of new designs. I wouldn’t mind a Robbie signature Les Paul, or ES-335, or whatever. That would be pretty epic.

The best thing would be to have some technique or workflow named after me. Like when Captain Picard was on the Stargazer and he used his warp engines to travel a short distance and therefore appear to be in two places at once and fool his enemy’s sensors. That technique became known as The Picard Maneuver. Or when Commander Riker of the Enterprise started flinging his leg over the back of his chair before sitting down, thus creating The Riker Maneuver. Something like that. Maybe jogging in place (pronounced “yogging in place”) followed by a protein bar breakfast could be called The Robert Maneuver. That would be pretty sweet, don’t you think?