So the names won’t mean anything to the rest of you, for now, but I’ve been listening to two of my characters argue back and forth for several weeks. (At some point, you’ll meet Angus and her grandmother and understand that previous sentence.) The topic is doing new things on a regular basis. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) refers to something similar as her “anti-stodgy campaign.”

The logic goes like this: According to studies, most people lock down their personalities pretty hard starting in their mid-teens. By their mid-twenties, things are carved into ruts. You will eat the same food, wear the same clothes, listen to the same music (usually the same albums, and not just the same bands), etc. for the rest of your life. Let me repeat that: for the rest of your life.

That frightens me. It’s worse when I realize how many people I have encountered in my life who are still THERE. (Three decades later, for me, as a scale of comparison.) Listening to exactly the same bands now on the state fair circuit, without a new album in decades.

So the Babe works every month to do something completely new. New clothes. New food. Maybe a new toothpaste or a new way to drive home. Conscious effort to say YES to new things when given the chance.

We call it “Adventures.”

Why this matters.

I have been infected with adventure.

Last week, we were in the Half-priced Books store, looking for something. Wasn’t there, but I stopped and looked at the used music racks, just for fun. I have found that I can frequently find some greatest hit album for a band I sort of know and kind of like, for about $5. Or, cheaper than I could get the two or three songs I really like from someplace like Amazon.

There was a album that looked just weird. Odd name. Weird picture. Hand-written font for most things. $4. What the hell. Looks like fun, and I need to do something crazy this month, so I bought it.

No idea who the band is. Walk out into the parking lot, jump in Baxter, and throw it into the CD player. Windows are down. Sunroof is open. Nice day.

Turned out to be a pretty good album. First of so far three from a Scottish band. Might have to dig up the others, and wiki tells me that they are supposedly recording a fourth (I think. Not looking it up right now to confirm.).

The band caught my eye originally because of their name: We Were Promised Jetpacks. And, damn it, we were. Somebody should do something about that.

The album was These Four Walls. Pretty good stuff. Not going to move the world, but a nice listen and I ripped it to add into the mix.

Last month, someone on social media suggested a band named Tinariwen, which they described as a Tuareg Blues. Yes, seriously. Once you get past the singing in a language I don’t speak, it is absolutely Mississippi Blues. The album I picked up was their 2015 concert album: Live in Paris. And I’m not usually a blues fan. But these folks are good musicians, and were having a good time.

Which brings me back to the original point: What new thing have you done lately?

🙂