I've been trying to save recently, but the one thing I keep splurging on is coffee. It's become routine. I sort of expected this, though. I'm a creature of habit. I mean it. Picture Sméagol discovering coffee; golluming down vanilla lattes, making a lair in the Starbucks bathroom, tracing the green logo, hoarsely whispering "my precious," etc. Yup.

This is a bit of an exaggeration, but I can often be found purchasing coffee from any number of dining establishments on campus and off, even when—sometimes especially when—I've already made some at home.

This all might seem like a negative way of framing habits, and it is to a certain extent. Habits in the abstract are not fundamentally good or bad; it's just when habits become more confining than comforting that they become an issue.

If you feel like you have to choose things that are tried and true, you won't be able to discover new and better things. And as scary as the world is, it's also full of wonders waiting to be sought or stumbled upon.

Now, I'm definitely not the best person to talk about this—seeing as I'm currently sipping sheepishly at an iced coffee and trying not to remember that my name and order got memorized awhile ago—but I think it's pretty self-evident that your life should not be lived on auto-pilot.