I wrote this post a month ago, and I was recently drafting another post about a similar thing and I realized that I never posted this one! Oops! So I decided to do an extra post this week, so I can post this one now and the next one on Monday so that they are in order! This will be post one of three in a series where I get a few things off my chest. Once they are all available, they will be here: two, three.
I am also a lover of routine. The industry I worked in had a lot of changes every day and this meant constant pivoting when it came to strategies or actions. Or maybe a client would ask for something that we had never done, so I was constantly having to learn new things or be creative. However, the general tasks around all of that were fairly routine and I would go in an hour earlier than everyone else so I could work on my checklist before the chaos ensued.
So, why am I talking about this? Well, despite the fact that I am not currently working a traditional job, I still have these personality traits! If I get a "task" I want to get it done right away and get it off my list. And for my days, I would like to have at least a few hours where the action items are exactly the same, and I can have that "comfort zone." However, when you have more time or when you change locations a lot or when you are meeting new people with their own quirks and agendas, this is not always possible.
Let me give you an example. The other day I met up with a woman for drinks and dinner. Let me set the scene. There is a FB group where you can link up with other solo travelers or locals, in this case it is all women. So when she said she would be where I was, I contacted her to see if she wanted to meet up. She said yes and asked if I wanted to meet for dinner that evening. It turns out she is French, and if you are not familiar, there are two things you should know about *most* French people. First, they often eat dinner a lot later than I am used to. Dinner hours in a restaurant for example, is usually 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm, but they can easily spent three hours eating, meaning that if you eat at 9:00 pm, it could be finished at midnight. The other thing is that French people have a more flexible understanding of timelines than I do. For example, if you say that we will meet for dinner at 9 pm, people may trickle in at 9 pm, or maybe 9:10 pm or 9:15 pm and nobody will be offended.
So. The French woman asks about dinner, and I, knowing how they can be, ask her what time she is considering for this. We agree on 7:00 pm. It is a 20 minute walk from my place to dinner, so I leave my house at 6:35 just in case, and of course because I like to be a few minutes early, and I do not want to be late, which in my case, would be anything after 7:00 pm. I arrive at the restaurant at 6:55 pm and I get a text from her saying that she is going to be 5-10 minutes late as something has come up. I decide to go inside and get a table if possible and order a drink while I wait. I wait for a while.
She arrives at 7:25 pm. She is a nice woman and we have a good time, and this does not ruin my day in the least, but this is a very typical example of how life is when you are constantly meeting with people who you know nothing about. My routine is shot basically, and it is hard to wrap my mind around it. However, the other alternative is to not meet up with people, and then it is too easy to get into a funk where I am alone all the time and not trying new things because I am worried that they will mess up my routine. So obviously this is not an option!
However, these kinds of things definitely give me a bit of a feeling that I am lacking control, which of course, I am in this situation! But I don't really like this feeling, so I decided to work on some things that I do have control over so that I could counterbalance it. So have been running again. You may have assumed I was already doing this, but I wasn't really. I have been walking and hiking (average per day in June was 6.2 miles or about 10 km), but not really running (total in June was 32 miles [~1 per day] or about 50 km). *This post was drafted on July 3rd. :)
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| Running in Warsaw |
This is not always easy, as I am sometimes moving around a lot, but this is something I feel that is important and also gives me a chance to explore a new place (even though sometimes the decision fatigue of figuring out where to go each time is real!)
I don't really need an accountability buddy, because I am pretty hard on myself as it is, but I am telling you this so it will be in print so that I cannot back off when I am feeling lazy. My goal is to run three times a week, and I am still trying to do at least 10,000 steps per day! So now you know.
Does meeting new people come easily to you? What does "being on time" mean to you? Do you have any step or fitness goals at the moment?
the older I get, the harder is to meet new people especially when moving around so much. but I really try to with limited free time. Yet, I cannot commit to dinners/evenings because I need to be in bed by 8pm. hahaha....
ReplyDeleteExactly! It does get harder, and also I think we get less inclined to bend (like you said, specific bed times, other things going on) our time as we get older. When I was young, going out for a spontaneous 10 pm drink was no beg deal. Now I am less enthusiastic about that kind of stuff!
DeleteBring it on! One of the hardest parts about working in an office is that I am someone who gets stuff done and stays on top of things. That often meant that I was getting work done way ahead of schedule, so I would end up with nothing to do and hours left in the workday. Let me tell you, it's very tiring to look busy for the entire workday. In the WFH era, it's much easier to do what I want with my time and just make sure that I'm moving the mouse from time to time to keep my Slack light on.
ReplyDeleteI will confess that my definition of being on time depends on the activity. If I'm meeting someone for dinner at 7, then I'm doing exactly what you did and showing up a few minutes before 7. If we're talking about showing up to the office back in the pre 2020 days, then I was always coming in 15 to 20 minutes late.
Did you know that there is a mouse mover, so that you don't have to do it!? My cousin told me about it, as she also works from home and has to keep the light green or whatever! Re the on time thing, I agree that if it is not hurting anyone or making someone wait, the rules may not be so strict, but if you have committed to meeting one person or a few people at a certain time, that is a different story.
DeleteI tend to be a pretty rigid, routine oriented person - maybe it's the Taurus in us? I do really make an effort to be more go-with-the-flow, but it doesn't come naturally to me at all. I am an on-time person, or a few minutes early. Fortunately all my friends here are EARLY people. Like, if an event starts at 7 I expect them by 6:50. They are a prompt people!
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I have any new fitness goals. I always get 10-15K steps a day - not hard as I always walk Rex, which is a big chunk of that. I am strength training more, which I dislike, but I don't want my bones to crumble.
Argh, Nicole, I need to start doing more strength training! I know that it is important but I just don't make the time. I need to work on that, as I also do not want my bones to crumble! I am lucky to have mostly on time friends, and one in particular who I know will always be there before me (you have to love that!) But meeting new people and dealing with their idiosyncrasies is hard!
DeleteI would say meeting new people is hard for me as in if I was traveling solo, I’m not sure I would put myself out there Ina FB group of solo travelers. All that to say, I am social and I am an extrovert, so I like meeting new people. I tend to meet people thru my kids’ schools. Rae starts at a new to us high school on Monday and I have already met some lovely moms they a few meet and greets.
ReplyDeleteI changed my workouts recently. I do not set goals for myself, but I do workout daily unless it just isn’t possible. My fitness goal has started to include a 4 plus mile walk in addition to my strength videos. I was running every other day but now that I can’t run (taking a break bc I might have a stress fracture in my back- eliminating running to see if that is the issue. Per my PT husband and I am not loving this situation). I realized recently that I could walk daily vs every other day since Coach insisted I reduce my runs to every other a few years ago.
I am not GREAT at being punctual but I make an extra effort when it matters- doc appts and meeting someone new. My biggest problem is trying to get ‘one more thing done’ before I leave the house.
Haha, that is my friend's problem too! She is always trying to get "one more thing" done. She recently came back from a vacation in Hawaii and she told me that this vacation was "not a very relaxing one" and I said to her, "have you EVER had a relaxing vacation?" i.e. she loves to "get one more thing done" on vacation too and there are always errands, events, excursions and "FUN THINGS TO DO" that cannot be missed! She just cannot sit still. Are you a Gemini by chance? :)
DeleteI'm 100% very routine orientated. I just wrote a comment on someone else's blog about it. I get very antsy when my routine is disrupted and my last month has been very disrupted and I am barely hanging on. I need another month of normalcy before I settle down.
ReplyDeleteBut I'd like to add that my days at the office are very different. There are some days when I'm all over campus doing things and other days when my email is pinging like mad. So the routine is going to work, but the work is never routine, if that makes sense.
I also set goals because I am not internally motivated and need a sheet of paper to tell me that I'm on the right track. Ha!
I get what you are saying about work; that is exactly how I felt. There were certain things that were "structured" as in, I came in at the same time, I had that hour to get important things done before the phone started ringing and the $ hit the fan and everything started to happen. So this actually made it okay for the most part.
DeleteI also like goals, but not too many, because I can get into a black hole of goals since if I set it I have to get it done or I feel guilty about myself. So I have to be careful not to overload, or else I just feel unsatisfied or unhappy with myself. BUT there is a happy medium somewhere!
I find it really hard to meet new people – offline. Online is so much easier. And then if I am lucky I get to meet them in real life. But offline arghhh. specially when you have no kids – it feels like at a certain age all relationships and friendships develop through kids. Which I get its part of most people's life. But I feel lonely at times. With the too moves I had to get into new neighborhoods and try to connect. I really pushed myself here outside my comfort zone...
ReplyDeleteAs for the being on time part... I try to be on time. And when I am on my own I often enough manage to be on time. I also manage to be late (doctors appointments...) When with anyone else I am never on time. I always feel I have time because they are not ready but they think I am not ready and so it's ping ponging until... duh late.
Re the kids, I get that! I am lucky (?) to have some friends who have made the same decision that I have re not having kids and so we can relate to each other in that way. However, I have some great friends who do have kids, we just can't vent about the same exact thing or relate on that particular level, but that is okay. Of course that gap does widen due to people who have to pay for their kids to do things or take time for their kids to do things, whereas I have more time (or money) to do what I want. I think also regardless of kids or no kids, many people don't really understand my trajectory in general, so I am having to make new friends too!
DeleteWell you know how I feel about timeliness. If we agree to meet somewhere at 7, I will probably be there at 6:50. Sometimes something does truly come up (like traffic or a kid having to go to the bathroom right as we are leaving) and then I will feel wracked with guilt over being late for something. I feel like it's so disrespectful to be late. I guess I have more of a contractual view of meet ups - if we agree to meet at 7, we owe it to each other to be there at the agreed upon time. I do not like the thought of someone waiting for me to arrive. This was ingrained in me from a young age, though. My family is of the "early is on time" mindset.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a lot of opportunities to meet new people, aside from interactions at work. And I currently am struggling to keep in touch/see the people I am friends with! So I am not really in an accumulation stage of life. All that said, I don't really have a best friend right now which kind of bothers me but it would take a lot of work to elevate another friendship to best friend status. So I'm just sort of shrugging my shoulders about that.
Yay for running, though! I am trying to run 3 times/week. This week I will hit it as it's easier for me to fit workouts in when I travel than when I am home. I'd say I hit that 3 times mark most weeks. And my long runs have gone fine so I seem adequately trained for my upcoming 10 mile. I just can't wait to run in cooler, drier temps. It's been so humid lately which makes for some hard training runs.
I am also in the "early is on time" camp! My parents (or maybe it was my Dad, but in my mind as a kid it was my parents plural) were often late because they had their own business and either they had "one more thing" to do, or they had to network. Like if we were walking down the street in town, but had to be somewhere, my Dad could not NOT stop and talk to people along the way, so we were always late for something. I have memories of my parents telling us to get in the car because we were about to leave, and then me sitting in the car for minutes, or maybe hours, sometimes. This is why I read; I had to do something or I would have gone crazy!
DeleteUg humidity. You know how I feel about that! I remember being in WI/MN at this point last year and UG. It was UG, hot and humid. Actually the runs we did were not too bad, but when I was on the bike, I think I had heat stroke at least once a day. It does not lend itself to being outside and active. It has been in the 90s where I am now, but luckily at the moment it is not humid! Yay. So I have no excuse not to get out and get my workout done.
I am completely obsessed with being on time. One of my sisters is habitually late, and it drives me nuts. I am usually early unless it would be perceived as rude, such as to a dinner party at someone's home. When I was a kid, my parents were very loose about time. We often arrived late at church, all 6 of us, and piled into a pew after the priest had already processed to the altar. I was always embarrassed. And from what I recall, it was never us kids who were the delay.
ReplyDeleteLike Lisa, I feel that being late is disrespectful. I'm mortified at the thought of anyone waiting for me to arrive past the appointed time.
I have no problem meeting new people, per se. I can talk easily to pretty much anyone. Are they people I then want to invite out to lunch or a drink later? No, not as a rule. I feel like I don't meet that type of person anymore In Person.
I agree re the mortification of being late. Even if the person is French (haha) I still feel embarrassed or sweaty if I am running what I perceive as late, which could really just be on time, or probably will still be before the other person arrives! But it is twofold: first I don't want the person to have to wait for me (and God forbid, pun intended, that a crowd is watching me arrive late! OOF) because that seems disrespectful, but also I have my own inner voice telling me that what I am doing is wrong, be it right or wrong. I am harder on myself than most other people are on me!
DeleteRe the new people, I can meet like minded people but not many become bosom buddies, as that takes time, and with me moving around, that is something that usually does not progress as far as that.
I am rarely late, but I tend to arrive for some things ON time. It really depends on the context. My best friend and I walk each week and I'm never early to meet up with her. But if I was meeting someone for the first time, I would be early, 100%!
ReplyDeleteI love routine and am really looking forward to September and a return to schedules and patterns to my day. Right now it's a bit helter skelter and I start to feel stir crazy.
Gold stars for the running!
Thanks for the gold stars, but don't congratulate me yet, as this was a post I crafted in July, and I have a follow up coming next week. :) I think that what you said about meeting a friend for a walk makes sense. I probably would still be early, but when you are best friends, you have more of a give and take (like I mentioned with my friend) and so it is okay. I am not that rigid! But it is harder with new people!
DeleteI get nervous meeting new people. Like you, I like to be on time, but 5 minutes late is OK. I don't like too strict a routine, G loves his routine, so we kind of butt heads in that department as he can be a bit inflexible with scheduling. I normally try to walk at least 8000 steps but most days I would do a lot more (probably averaging around 14,000), I also try to run twice a week and do 2 strength sessions, but this weekend I have a tight calf so I won't run.
ReplyDeleteBummer about your calf; what is going on with that? That is always hard, as the last thing I need is an excuse not to get something done, or if I am in a groove, I don't want my routine (exercise) messed up because it is hard to claw back into it sometimes! I often walk more than 10k, but I still try to think of it as trying to do at least 10k per day, and my real goal is an average of about 13k-15k, but usually that is because I have a few longer days where I hike or run, but I want to try to at least get outside on a daily basis, as it is way too hard to get lazy!
DeleteI am amazed there are FB groups like this…I’ve belonged to a couple of FB groups when I was planning my trip to France, and occasionally someone will say, “I’m going to be in X town on this day, does anyone want to get a coffee?” And I will admit I just assumed it was some kind of hook up or internet scam. Now I know another reason, people traveling maybe want to meet other traveling people! I’ve never traveled alone, though I do think of it from time to time and may give it a try at some point. My BFF does it often and LOVES IT. Solo travel that is, I doubt she meets up with strangers, her solo jaunts are pretty quick.
ReplyDeleteI hate being late. I had a doctor appt the other day at 1:10 and I was there at 1:09 and I was SWEATING I was so nervous of being late.
I tend to get my work done pretty quickly too. I had an interview for a job once when my daughter was young. When I asked about work/life balance, they said that the average work week was 60 hours, did I have a problem with that. I said, I generally get my work done more quickly than others, what if I finish my work in 40 hours? :You will be expected to stay and help others.” And of course this was an exempt position, so no more money for all of that time. Nope.
Julie, there are FB groups for everything! If you are going on a cruise you can actually either search the ship name to find out information about that specific ship, or you can search the ship name and date and get in a group with the other sailors and plan things ahead of time. There are groups for slow travelers, long distance hikes and bikepacking routes, and I have used all of them to get info and meet people!
DeleteThat job interview sounds fun! I think I also would have said no thanks to that one! I think there is a quote in there somewhere about something; maybe it was the one about asking a busy person if you want something done, or maybe it was the Bill Gates one about lazy people actually being smart as they will do the absolute minimum but still get something done? No, that's not it, but I feel like there is a quote about this somewhere!
I thrive on routine, too, and I get very overwhelmed when my routine gets thrown off. And I can get in my feelings if I'm meeting up with someone and they're late because then I feel like they do not value my time at all. Of course, that's different when it's a new friend and then I just learn to adjust my expectations of them.
ReplyDeleteI find it very hard to meet new people! I am just so shy and socially awkward with new people, and never know how to engage them in conversation.
I agree, but I have found it easier if I already know some things that we have in common (it can be painful trying to figure that out in person) so I have something to start with. So it is easier when they are travelers, because we can lead with that. Otherwise it can be like pulling teeth!
DeleteI always try to be and generally am on time/slightly early but am oddly? mostly unbothered by other people being late. I think partly because it’s just so common in my area because traffic and parking is so often awful and unpredictable. I do a lot of research before going to places/leave super early if I can (and often end up with not much time to spare despite that!) to account for it but I know a lot of people don’t think to or can’t so I do understand if that’s an issue. There are many things I’m not chill about so I’m actually kind of surprised about this haha.
ReplyDeleteI used to have a pretty strict daily mile goal (minimum 4, sometimes up to like 8, or 10+ on a wkend, mostly walking with some jogging) and I’m actually glad to have given that (and myself, ha) a rest, for now at least. The rigidity was kind of a coping mechanism/almost inevitable for me during the pandemic bc I lived alone and worked remotely and mostly independently at that so I felt I *had* to get outside and see a few other humans each day, ha. I still try to get outside most days but I don’t feel anxious or worried or take unnecessary risks/make myself uncomfortable like I used to vis a vis getting miles in if the weather is terrible or I don’t feel great (I just skip and pick up the next day/when I can!), or disappointed in myself if I only do a mile or two. I’m enjoying the flexibility, although I have lost some fitness for sure!
Meeting new people is definitely tough for me! I just don’t seem to connect super easily with people and feel myself getting more awkward/aloof with age after feeling I improved a lot in my late 20s/30s lol. Again, pandemic and wfh certainly didn’t help. I’m doing a couple of enrichment and fitness classes this fall and while my expectations are not high it would be great to meet some nice people as part of that.
I feel like people being late is sometimes annoying and sometimes I just roll with it. That is part of realizing that it doesn't really help to worry about or get mad over things that are beyond your control.
DeleteRe the mileage, I am definitely better now at being happy with less. I used to be very strict about my miles and I would achieve my goals, but now I am happy to get outside, run any mileage and get my steps in! However, I am not super happy when my pants start feeling tighter, so there is still a goal of avoiding that!