I’m oldish

I’m close to hitting a milestone in age and this one in particular is bothering me. I think I’ve identified one major concern where I think that I’ve crossed some imaginary threshold in thinking. In particular I’m worried that I am spending more time running a pre-automated script rather than learning. For example, one script that I run is when I meet someone new, I have a preset number of questions that I have ready at the top of my mind as well as relevant follow up questions. While the list helps me be polite and friendly, the conversation is pretty much guaranteed to stay on a superficial level.

That’s just a more complex example of a script. From the moment we wake up, our bathroom habits are pretty much 100% scripted and until we open the first non-routine e-mail at to work we might not had an original thought. I’m not mindlessly praising uniqueness since much of random unique thoughts probably do not have any value.
I’ve been reading a lot about how much of what we consider to be vision is actually the brain remembering and filling in the blanks. Similarly I wonder how much we are actually thinking as opposed to just identifying situations and then running the appropriate script.

I think the largest worry is that I’m at a point where even if free will existed, I’m not acting freely.