Waiting zone might be the title of the movie about the last year. Stuck in waiting zone.
I read a beautiful book today that captured the complexity of being a human (a flawed human) so well that it made me cry. Life can be so complicated, relationships, self awareness, self sabotage, cross communicating, our unlived desires and on and on.
When a book can capture those layers of complexity so well, it makes me feel less alone in the world. It gives us a way to see each other. To peek behind the curtain and see all the different ways every life and every relationship is complicated.
I’m finding that so much of my life is spent not wanting to do things and doing them anyway.
I spent a good 25 minutes whining to myself inside my head about not wanting to ride the bike this morning. I had a million excuses and I went on and on and on. I had to call myself on my whining and just get up and do it anyway. And of course it was much less painful than I’d made it out to be. There are exceptions but most things are so much bigger in my head than they are in the world.
If it weren’t for the philosophy of doing in anyway, I’d pretty much spend my life on the couch reading.
Instead I worked out, did a bunch of work, connected with my friend Kelly, did more work, went climbing, setup my new computer and installed two OSs upgrades and so many many apps, and took a walk with my hubby, and worked some more.
I didn’t want to do any of that.
I did it all anyway.
Yes to showing up and doing the hard (but good) things.
We went climbing today at the gym for the first time in months.
Last night, I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep and my mind kept going back to an email I sent that had a typo in it. I kept trying to decide if I should get up and respond to acknowledge the typo or if I should just let it go. I spent a good 20 minutes thinking about this while I was lying in bed in the dark.
The amount of time and energy I spend on things that are seemingly inconsequential is way too much. And also the way I use my time in general is not necessarily in line with my long-term goals and values.
I’ve been thinking this week that I should put a sign above my desk that says: “Will this matter in 5 years?” So every time I’m making a decision I can look up at the sign and answer that question first and then decide.
While I love reading and can spend all my minutes doing that, I could definitely read a few fewer books and spend some of that time cooking myself nutritious food or going climbing with my husband or hanging out with my children to hear about some of their day. And yet I don’t prioritize those things nearly as much as I wish I did. And remembering if this will matter in 5 years will help with that too because really is it going to matter that I read an extra 50 books this year when compared with the relationships that allows me to deepen if I take time to be with my people? Or if I take time to get healthier and stronger?
5 years from now my older son will be in college and my younger son will be in high school, only a handful of years away from going away himself.
5 years from now my job will decidedly be different than it is today.
And 5 years from now the typo I made in that email will definitely not matter.
But it will matter that I took some time today to go climbing with my husband. It will mean I’m stronger and it will mean our relationship is deeper because I took an hour and a half out of my schedule to do something that we share and love doing.
Now I just have to think and act this way more often.
Yes to remembering what matters and yes to letting go of the rest. Yes to choosing important over urgent.
I feel absolutely exhausted today. So right now I am saying yes to just resting on the couch and watching a movie and soon I will say yes to going to bed so I can rest and hope that tomorrow is a bit less exhausting.
Today was decidedly not a no-meeting day 🙂 I am tired and wiped.
It hasn’t been a year since I was last at work but it’s pretty close. And while I can’t believe it’s been this long, what really makes me struggle more is the lack of clarity around timeline and path to reintegration. I can’t see a line of sight to any version of normal life.
I can’t see what will change so that my kids can fully go back to school. Or so we can go back to work. So we can eat at a coffee shop with friends. So I can travel and see my family again. All of these milestones seem an indeterminate amount of time away. Can’t tell if it’s 6 months 9 months 2 years or even more. That uncertainty is the hardest part.
And yet the climbing gym is opening on Wednesday which is a cause for celebration. So maybe it’s just about baby steps.
Yes to small wins and also yes to naming the pain and frustration. Naming things matters.
It’s no meeting week at work today. On a usual day, I start at 8-9am and have meetings straight through to 5-6pm. On a good day, I get 30 minutes for lunch and maybe another 30 mins at some point.
So having no meetings is not a small change for me. It fundamentally shifts how I approach my work and what I can get done.
Today I was able to get up, exercise, journal and draw, make a healthy breakfast and read and reply to each mail fully. I was able to read all the links, documents and presentations. I was able to have impromptu conversations to resolve issues. I was able to write intelligent and thoughtful replies.
It felt both productive and calm and rewarding. While it’s not a realistic way for every week to look, I do think having a day or two without meetings semi-regularly seems to be a very good idea.
More generally, changing up routine and taking a step back is the best way to see inefficiency in the system or even have enough distance from it to see what modification might be helpful. I’m grateful to get this chance to do that for work.
I find that my brain is constantly jumping back and forth between thoughts.
There are contradictory thoughts and dormant thoughts that pop up like popcorn at random times especially if I’m on vacation of some sort and thus relaxing. why aren’t you doing this? why don’t you want to do more of that? You really should be doing this other thing.
My brain tells me what to do and it reprimands me about all the things I’m not doing. It’s constantly striving constantly optimizing and constantly judging.
This is one of the reasons I am trying to meditate more and rest more so that I can learn to quiet my own brain. So I can let those thoughts rise and then disappear. This is the only way they don’t take up all the space.
Taking a bath is another way I can slow down and pay attention to the voices and tell them everything is going to be okay.
I love routine and for the most part I think that’s a really good thing. Routine allows me to create an intentional life and spend time on what matters most to me and what I want to improve. Routine makes it easy to show up and easy to get things done.
And yet it also makes it easy to get stuck in a rut. Doing the same things again and again doesn’t give me the time to take a step back and evaluate.
This is where a change of scenery helps the most. A new place, a change in routine, a new perspective.
For someone who loves being home as much as I do, it can be really hard to go on vacation. And yet time away is always helpful.
Every single time.
Yes to taking time away. Yes to rest. Yes to the woods.
Wednesdays are tough over here. I start 8am and don’t end until 8pm, at which point I am wiped and can’t even think.
So I start my days with meditation and yoga to ensure I am calmer than usual and grounded.
And I think I need something to also end my days with so I can re-ground myself again so I don’t carry over Wednesday’s stress to Thursday. Maybe that’s a short walk outside or a short journaling session.
Either way, today I’m grateful to have made it through this Wednesday and grateful that this week is almost at an end. It was a short but mighty week so far.
Yes to yoga and yes to grounding. Yes to making in through Wednesdays!
Two weeks ago, jake and I meant to go climbing but at 3pm on Sunday we suddenly realized it wasn’t going to work out because we still had to get big boy’s birthday cake and the sun was going to set soon.
I decided then and there that we wouldn’t do this again. I put a calendar reminder for us to leave the house by 2pm every Sunday so we could go climbing. If we decided to go Saturday that week, awesome. Or if we went Sunday morning that’s awesome too. But if we didn’t go by Sunday at 2pm, we were to leave immediately.
The goal was to make it weekly routine so it wouldn’t be a discussion each week. And this week it worked perfectly. I’ve learned that the most effective way to combat inertia is to make something into a routine. And yet I keep not doing this.
Not sure why I keep having to learn this lesson again and again but here we are.
Here’s to climbing regularly and finding ways to create routine structures for the life that I want to live vs the life inertia is making me default to.
Yes to choosing the way I spend my time. Yes to climbing more.
