Out of the Groove

This is the post I was writing when I realized that I had never posted this post! Sometimes my drafts get out of hand, and also it just confirms the fact that when I get out of routine, I get sloppy! (This will be post two of three in a series where I get a few things off my chest. Once they are all available, they will be here: one, two, three). 

Also, I want to apologize, as I accidentally put a jump break in my last post, which then truncates it on the main page of my blog and  on the Feedly feed. I did not mention this in my peeves post, but this is another of my peeves! When I am reading in Feedly, I don't want to have to click a link; I want to see the entire post and sometimes if they are truncated, I pass on them. So it should be fixed now! Okay, carrying on. 

I am out of the groove again. Let me explain. A couple of weeks ago, I did an eight day hike where I had no service or internet and it was wonderful. I saw some beautiful views, ate lots of ramen noodles, and got to lie in my tent with the stars above my head most nights. Before that, I was in faster travel mode, and I went to four different places in three weeks. What this means is that usually I am in the place for 3-6 days with a day of travel in between each one. This makes it kind of hard to get into a groove, as it involves a lot of packing and unpacking, sitting on buses and looking up what to do and see in each new place, but I did try to run a few times a week, sightsee a few times a week, and hit up some of the historical places. 

This is where Franz Ferdinand was shot and killed

However, this faster travel followed by the off the grid hike, along with the prep and the aftermath of the hike, has caused me to get out of the groove that I was starting to get into (you may remember from my last post that I wanted to start running three times a week; in the first three weeks of July, I did just that!). Then I returned from the hike and I have hundreds of unread emails, Feedly posts and things on my to do list to get done. Instead of tackling them head on, I feel no motivation to get started. I want to just mark all as read, but that is not really my personality (upholder here!). I have to touch it and look at it and read it, and then if I read it, I have to comment on it, and then I have to return to see if there is a reply... sigh. In addition, I am now in a new place again and so want to see the sights and try the foods and walk the streets, but sometimes it is hard to find a good mix of relaxing and exploring. 

I know this is a first world problem, and some of you have kids and jobs and real problems to juggle and this probably sounds like complaining, but it is not. It is just a comment about the lack of routine in my life at the moment, and a expression of how that can often be a little discombobulating. However, I can happily say that none of this stresses me out. I remember days when I was in my 20s and I was going to school from 7 am to 1 pm and then working from 2 pm to 10 pm and then coming home and having a glass of wine or going out for drinks with coworkers to wash away the problems of the day. I don't do that anymore. My therapy is in wandering, taking photos, sitting in a park and watching people go about their days. My therapy is in researching and learning, in being curious. I find joy in that. However, sometimes I want to do nothing, but I feel guilty about that. 

I actually wrote another post that I never published about commitment and guilt. The funny thing is that in this post I talk about my issues with doing things in order, and how I cannot read something from today without first reading the thing from yesterday, or how I cannot post something from today without first posting the thing from yesterday. Actually, now I am trying to decide whether I should post that post first, and wait on this one....but no. I will post that one out of order (the horror!) in a few days and link it here once it's done! 

So, without giving away everything that I talked about in the commitment post (coming soon!) I will just say that I am behind on all things, and I am not running three times a week and I need to book some travel but am putting it off. I am out of my groove, and I want to get back into it, but am struggling to get back on the right track. And I will end this post here, with a few questions for you. 

Do you get bogged down by "having to" complete tasks in order? Do you feel guilt when you don't want to do something, even when it is a self imposed task (or even a fun task sometimes)? Do you often feel like you need a vacation from your vacation?  

Also, the Twenty Questions series is still going strong! Don't forget to fill out --> THE QUESTIONNAIRE!

Routine Shmootine

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.

At work we used to talk about people who would work to a deadline. You know these people. Maybe you are one of these people. These people get one project and if they have a day to do it, they will get it done in a day. If they have a week, it will take them a week. I am not one of these people. If you give me a task, I put my all into getting it done as quicky and efficiently as I can while still having it be done right, double checked and revised. If this means that I do the task in one day and then have the rest of the week to sit around, so be it. I also don't do things on a whim normally. I don't "dash out emails" or answer without thinking. Sure, do I take longer to do some things? Yes. Do I frustrate people because of my analysis paralysis or my need for things to be nearly perfect? Of course. Do I sometimes do less things because I overthink things? Absolutely. 

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. :)

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? 

Creature of Habit

I am a creature of habit. I find that it makes things easier. Rather than scrambling around in the morning or forgetting something, I feel like if I always do it the same way, it is less likely to go wrong. There are a few things I always do.

Keys: The keys always go in the same place. It a nice empty place where they can't get piled in with a bunch of other things. They have their own place of honor and they always go there. When I am on the move, they always go in the same pocket of my purse, every time.

Coffee: I almost always set up the coffee the night before if I am working the next day. That way I can get up, turn on the pot and then start getting ready for my day while it's brewing. However, I am not really a coffee snob. I have been known to make a whole pot and just nuke it the next day if there is some left over.

White Board: I have a white board where I write my weekly schedule: to do, running, shopping and evening activities all go on the board. Each Sunday, I wipe away all the things I got done and rewrite my coming week's items. It makes me feel like I have accomplished something, even when it's minor (I also leave the finished things up on the board until Sunday so I can revel is the joy of getting them done).

Black Pants: I own several pairs of black slacks. I find it's much easier to just grab a random pair of pants and snatch up a shirt and voila, I have an "outfit". It's not super exciting, but it's efficient.

Water Plants: I have this little ritual when I get home where I water the veggies and pick anything that's ripe. It feels good and seeing food that I have grown (not killed!) is very satisfying and I find it's a great way to wind down after a long day.

Alarm: I like to get up early and have a bit of extra time to get a few things done. Sometimes its something online, or maybe it's updating my planner or organizing a little bit. Either way, it makes me feel more productive during the day to not have rushed around in the morning.

Lunch: I always pack my lunch the night before. I suppose it's all the same, since it takes the same amount of time whether you do it at night or in the morning, but by doing it at night I have that little bit of extra time to do my organizing or whatever in the morning.

Shower: The routine is always the same. Get in, wet everything, shampoo, shave, rinse, condition, soap, rinse, done. I do not dawdle.

Read on Bus: I have a half an hour bus ride to get home and lately this has been the only (sigh, I know) time I have been reading. So, no matter how much I feel like I need to reply to that email or google this or that, I always take that half an hour to read my book.

As you can see from this list, it could probably be summed up by saying (1) I like to prep in the evening to save time in the morning and (2) I like routine. True. So true.

What habits do you have? Are there any weird ones? What is your shower routine?