Big Life, Little Victories

I started out having a dramatically bad day. And that sucks; I am not a fan of forecasting the day as a bad one before I even roll out of bed. I like mornings. They initiate new days, clean slates, unbroken-ness. (And they usually come with a cup—or four—of coffee!) I woke up at 5:45 AM to run. But I did not want to run. So l laid (or lied?) there aimlessly. That was a no good waste. Because when my second alarm sounded, I had not collected an extra hour of sleep or experienced that cardiovascular burn. Then I did not even shower because I just felt so lethargic. Not a pretty picture. I did proceed--in self-defense--to dress up extra fancy, hereby masking my surface layer… and maybe to hide a little beneath the surface too. 

I drove to work, listening to The Jillian Michaels Show the entire way. She berated me endlessly for my ability to make excuses. But eventually I excused myself as her points were, quite thankfully, directed at an audience of excuse makers. I still had the afternoon to run… 

From the minute I pulled into the parking lot of my office, I had little interest in actually being at work. And I was early. That was a win for the payer of my check. I was early because I left on time because I did not shower. That was a total win for water, a precious limited resource. I hope you caught that how that worked. I am so frequently late that, today, on-time was early. The secret: Do not shower. This tally was marked as a win for me.

I got situated in my upgraded* cube. Then I dove right into my grapefruit and filtered through emails. My emails were mostly boring. There were very new few tasks to accomplish. Mostly I felt stir-crazy… already--at 8:09 am. So I poked around on the internet for a bit.

Then I got to down and dirty with spreadsheets. I sorted through my Excel file and organized my YouTube tutorials. By doing this, I hoped, something would pop, unlike it had on Friday or Monday. My assignment: Learn how one creates multiple filters across different spreadsheets from one database. At 10:19 am, I ultimately concluded this was not possible. So I waddled--the result of no exercise and dressy but very uncomfortable shoes--into my boss’ office and informed him of my decision to ‘cut bait’ after 18 hours and 21 minutes of researching.

(Is cut bait used in every industry? If not, the phase is vastly underused.)

He did his typical whizzing around in my file… and in 16 minutes he had a solution. That was fabulous. Except for the part where I had very little idea what he did and was going to need to replicate it multiple times. I picked up the pace on the way back to my cubicle and tried to type up a process document for "our" new solution. In roughly 40 minutes, I had actually semi-figured it out. It was a grand feat. I felt a sense of some accomplishment. The day suddenly became filled roses and rainbows.

I am trying to approach life with less desire to wait for the beginning of a new day, week, month, year (gulp) to refresh. I need to control my non-stop brain from the drafting of ideal life scenarios. They are unrealistic. And I am living a generally happy life… so I should be more accepting of its authenticity.   

*If you are looking for full disclosure, technically my biggest feat of February 12, 2013 came very early this morning, in the form of a personal heater. You see my office building does not have heat. This has been an ongoing issue with my numbing body parts. But mostly my coworkers do not care because they sit in glamorous offices where royalty is bestowed upon them. Royalty comes in the form of a wall-to-wall window and a heater in the government contracting world. Well being the generally likeable person I am only person sitting in a cubicle, I was gifted my own personal heater when the first one became available. This morning that happened, circa 8:13 am.