Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Need to Restart the Day

I find that the process of building stress begins as I prepare to come into work.  If that set of preparations go smoothly then the morning goes smoothly.  If that set of preparations is bumpy, then the morning tends to be bumpy.  Today was a bumpy morning. I tossed and turned before I fell asleep last night for no apparent reason.  During the night I dreamed of work, one of my least favorite things to dream of. I moved smoothly enough through the morning until I realized I had missed at 6:30 AM meeting.

When I gathered my stuff to get ready for the morning commute it was a process of fits and starts. One of those fits and starts is what I consider to be a primary tip off that that the morning is going to go awry.  I have a small table that most of the incidental things I carry land on at the end of the day. When the clutter on that table gets to me, that is the first tip off that I am about to slide into a cranky morning. So, what I need to figure out is how to intervene, right then and then, and reset the day.  A stop, pause, contemplate and release sort of process might work well.  From there, I tend to carry that nagging sense of frustration into the day, a frustration at small things that begins to color every experience during the rest of the day.  

It was amplified by a long commute.  I have a variety of routes available to me as I drive into work, about four major ones. Normally, I take Lawrence Expressway.  The close second is 280 to 87 to 237. I opted for 280 this morning and that was a very slow choice.  It took me a long time to get onto 280 and then the interstate itself moved at a very slow creep until I got off at Wolfe Road, about three miles from the place I got on.  That three miles took about forty minutes. 
So now I am in the office, I have a bit of a tension headache, and I am trying to get the day restarted.

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