An uneventful workday. Not too stressful, not too boring either. That seems to be how it goes sometimes. Last week we tested our disaster recovery plan. It went fairly well but could have gone better I'm sure. We'll discuss it sometime this week. It was supposed to be today but the eventful, stressful, anything but boring day landed in some other folks cubicles today and they were fighting a performance and capacity nightmare all day. We'll get to it I'm sure. Get to the discussion of how to make D.R. better, I mean.
I anticipated the end of the workday. I want to get home. Cook. Take the daily walk that seems more like monthly. Pick up the pine cones in the yard so there aren't 247 of them by the time I mow next. Well, at least I'm on my way. I have one of the front row seats on the 5:25pm route 412 bus today. (Yes, the one on the left side so my view is NOT of what the driver sees. Remember, that way I don't have to "help him drive". Cardio! ;-)
Today I'm thinking about being adaptable. Flexible. Able to change course with ease. I don't do these things well. Heck, I don't even like the unexpected to show up on radar. I'm oncall this week. 24 x 7 from now til next Monday, May 7th at 8:00am - but whose watching the clock!!!
I decided to forgo the shorter ride home on the 103 for the sure seat on the 412. I saw a couple of my coworkers at the 103 stop. Who knows when a bus will come by with open seats for them. I went for the sure thing. Here it is 5:57 now and I left my desk at 5:15. 42 minutes elapsed already. All very predictable so far.
I feel like I've got to work on the adaptable, flexibility thing. I've got to be more spur of the moment on things and able to accept the unexpected because you know more and more the unexpected has become to be expected. Thinking of it that way I should be able to at least work on it. Opportunity knocks unexpectedly seemingly every day. As we stream up I-85 here. I see we've passed Shallowford Rd and now approaching the I-285 interchange. The driver will sling us all around in about 30 seconds as he slows for the always jammed traffic along here. (No I'm not looking! Or helping him right now!) Oh, here we go. I feel the brakes. Right on time. So why am I trying to suppress thoughts of "UGH! TRAFFIC!!!!" It's here every day about this time.
When I'm oncall I used to lay in the recliner (there finally the slinging around part). I used to lay in the recliner and dread/anticipate being called for whatever might have gone wrong on the computer system. Calls were fairly common and I was pretty new to solving the problems. It made me want to utilize one of my better coping skills for almost a solid week. Sleeping. It's one of my top two coping skills -- sleeping and pretending whatever is not happening. I finally got better at the problem solving but I still often sleep more during these oncall weeks than I normally do.
I'm writing this thought today because I want to make a mental note to myself that I've got to accept that unexpected things are going to happen. I've got to be flexible enough to face them head on and adapt to the ever changing EVERYTHING around me. I think it really is time to wake up, acknowledge and use the things that happen by and upon me to learn from them and to gain from them. No, I don't think it's going to be easy but isn't recognizing an issue the first part of solving it.
I guess I better stop here and help this driver get me home to my pine cones.
