It occurred to me today that I’ve been in a bit of a rut, lately.

This will be my forty-second consecutive daily post, if I get it completed and posted on time.

I barely got yesterday’s post done at all.

It’s been hard lately, trying to think of things to write about. I think I’ve been in a rut.

* * *

A little more than two years ago –so, the Spring of 2018– my wife called me on a Sunday afternoon to tell me that she’d gotten our mini-van stuck in an open field. So, I got in my car and headed out to her location to inspect the situation.

Upon arrival, I jumped in the driver’s seat of the van to try my best to get the van unstuck. Living in Michigan, you know how vehicles tend to get stuck in snow and mud, and you get taught how you might be able to ‘rock’ them out, if you are strategic about moving the vehicle forward and then backward and then forward and then backward to the point where your momentum, either forward or backward, can be added to the force of the traction of the tires to just be enough to get you out of being stuck.

So, I rocked the van, forward then backward then forward then backward, but it was no use. I got out, and I asked my wife to get in, and she took over while I went to the front of the van to try to see what was going on.

That was when I discovered the problem. She was in a rut.

Which is to say that the wheels had dug themselves into the mud, through their spinning force, so deeply that the van was aground. The bottom of the van was resting on the ground because the tires were so deeply entrenched in their ruts. As my wife tried to do what I’d just tried to do and I stood in front of the van and watched the tires, spinning pretty freely in their self-made valleys in the muck, I realized that this was quite a mess.

So, we called a friend with a tow strap who came and latched on to the van and pulled us out of our predicament.

That was quite the experience with ruts.

* * *

My wife and I have been married for nineteen years, and together for twenty-six. During that time, we’ve been cautious about getting into ruts with our marriage; going through the motions, doing what needs to be done, day in and day out, following the expected pattern and meeting the needs of the family as they pop up, but not really making any progress. She’s usually the one who notices before I do, because I’m pretty thick sometimes, and she will draw my attention to the fact that things have gotten stale and that we might be in a rut.

So, that’s when we will try something new, to spice things up, but those flash-in-the-pan experiences don’t usually work and we end up in the same pattern of survival, which is no way to be in a marriage. A lot of times, the best way to get out of a rut in a marriage, and to stay out of the ruts in a marriage in general, is communication. When we find that we are in a rut, it’s usually because we’ve gotten away from communicating. I become involved in a project for work, or she becomes busy with her job, or we start consuming too much media, or some crisis with the kids pops up; these things will end us up in a rut.

Luckily, we’ve never been in a rut in our marriage that has required us to ‘call a friend with a tow strap’, which is to say that we’ve never been in a rut that we couldn’t ‘rock our way out’.

* * *

We’ve all been in ruts before. We keep doing what we’ve been doing, because it’s working and nothing’s going wrong and the status quo is okay for us for now, but we can’t stay in those places. Progress requires moving forward, and I’m starting to think that the status quo is just an illusion that keeps people from seeking change. Is it ever really possible to maintain a complex set of circumstances –a system– for any length of time before entropy and change tear it apart?

This is my forty-second consecutive post on my blog. I don’t think anyone is reading any of these anyway, so it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if I just stopped. But, at this point, it’s about the streak. I want to keep this streak going and I think that this mandatory writing has been good for me.

But, I need to get out of this rut. I need to change up my topics.

Any suggestions?