Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Off & On



I meant to blog this last night....oops.

Monday was "Off"...Tuesday was "On". Do you get what I mean, or should I elaborate? Ok, I'll elucidate.

I've thought of different reasons, explanations, excuses to describe what happened Monday. I felt really "off". It started out great, because I had a fantastic breakfast: eggs fried just right over toast with a couple crispy strips of bacon...perfect. After that, things weren't "bad"...just..."off". I left work at 3:00 to go to the doctor, so that means I was in the office for 8 hours (one of which was lunch), but I feel like I accomplished so little, my energy level was dragging, and I didn't feel collaborative, cooperative, or productive. (Sorry, I can't help but give three examples/descriptions/annotations to everything.)

The externals: my 3-week-long cold; not enough sleep; bad drive in; the co-worker I share an office with was absent.
The internals: didn't spend the morning with God - felt the annoying, scraping, mood-souring fingers of old sins/temptations trying to take little nips out of me; lack of focus and passion for what I was doing; "life" frustrations, stress and distractions at the front of my mind instead of pushed back out of the way so I could focus on work.

I'm not trying to "explain away" anything that was my responsibility (or lack thereof). I know that some things I bring on myself. I could get more sleep to help my energy and focus. I could make a greater effort to have my morning devotions - so often I think to myself that I can "do them later". Even if "later" does eventually happen (which it often doesn't when I postpone it), that's no help to me during the day.

Tuesday: I was feeling/expecting more of the Monday-type stuff. The day started off worse: I woke up late, rushed out the door, intending to grab a bite on the way in. When I went to pay the cashier at the drive-thru window, that's when I realized I had left my wallet at home. So breakfast was a bust; and lunch would be too, since I had really brought one.

However, my souring mood hit a brick wall of positivity. (Hmmm...perhaps an improper analogy...uh, my souring mood was suddenly lifted into the clouds by dozens of happy sparrows) At 9:00, our HR dept. was going to have a 3-hour team/leadership-development session. I was worried my mood would obstruct any progress for me personally, and hurt the team...but I did my best to squash that (with a little help from my homey, JC) and we had a GREAT session. Lots of laughs. Lots of good ideas. Lots of inspiration.

The switch had been flipped to "On".

Even though half my day was gone, when I got to work after lunch, I accomplished 10x more in the next 4 hours than I had all day on Monday. I'm starting to feel like this post is long enough to guarantee skimming/skipping from my readers, so I'll not go into the lengthy reaction I could share about what happened in that 3-hour session and where my thoughts are taking me now. Maybe later. Besides, I've got another post to write tonight.