The Accelerator is Stuck!

This afternoon I went into the kitchen at work to toss together the ingredients for the lunch salad that I'd prepared the night before. As I was racing around, I man said something to me that just totally shocked me into consciousness.  He said, "You have no where to be and nothing to do.  Take your time."

Since sometime in late 2000 or early 2001, I've been racing.  In the early years, the dot.com bust had tanked my business, and I was attempting to right it before it sank. I raced. When I failed at that, I started teaching.  To earn a living as an adjunct college instructor requires teaching a lot of classes. That means lots of class preparation, paper grading, test making, and office hours. Up at 4 a.m. most days, my evening classes usually ended at 9 p.m. I raced all day.  Then when I got a consulting job that paid a normal salary, the expectation was that I'd work almost every waking hour to justify the salary.  I raced. I often fell asleep over my computer.

You get the gist.

I've been racing so long, and I think my accelerator has been stuck in overdrive.  When Thomas said to me, "You have no where to be and nothing to do,"  you could have knocked me over with a feather. For years there have always been five other things I should be doing and back-to-back meetings.  But, not now.  Of course, I had no where to be, and nothing I had to do. For a few seconds, I didn't know what to make of that.

When I finally got my head around it, I went into the lunchroom table, and I did something I've rarely done in the last 15 years. First, I breathed.  Then, I sat down, ate my lunch, and chewed my food. I tried to see if I could make my food last for 20 minutes. I had conversations with two interesting new coworkers.  With one, I shared Italian food/cooking stories.  My creativity kicked into gear as I thought about things I haven't cooked for a while, and mentally, I played with variations I might make.  I took a full 40 minutes for lunch.

I've been "loaned" by my employer to work for the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) for 4-1/2 months.  I needed a break from the pace of work I've been keeping for years and from the toxic work environment in which I have found myself, which increasingly seems to be spinning completely out of control. I applied for the opportunity and was accepted.  Tomorrow I will have been there for a week.

There are times when we are very busy, but on each end of most days, there is time to catch my breath and to do paperwork, return email, make calls, and even to do analysis about how to improve campaign performance.  Such a luxury.

Today when Thomas made his life-changing comment to me, I'd been in overdrive for about four hours.  In my "regular" job, that wouldn't have slowed down for another seven or eight hours, and when it did, I'd be looking at a ton of email and prep for the next day.  Today, my four hours of overdrive was followed by delicious sanity...and lunch, of course.

I've read a number of different estimates of how many days it takes to develop a new habit.  Some say 30 days, and others report 21. Some longer, others shorter.  But, I have 4-1/2 months to practice breathing, walking at a normal pace, eating lunch, being creative, talking to coworkers, and just generally enjoying myself at work.  Surely I can form a useful habit in 4-1/2 months that I can take back to my "real job" with me.  That will definitely be my intention, and taking a new habit back to work with me will certainly be a wonderful investment in my life.