Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Creature of Habit

It's coming down to the wire on my assigned day of guest blogging - in fact, for you East Coasters it's already Tuesday and I've missed the boat - and I'm feeling the pressure. Who knew blogging on a schedule would be so hard? Lucky for me I rock the West Coast, Seattle to be exact, and still have time. But I guess I wouldn't be me if I didn't sprinkle every assignment with a little procrastination. By way of introduction, I'm stephanielynn and am a friend of Nat's from her Utah (post-college) days. We first bonded in the workplace and over many, many baskets of rolls at The Texas. The bonding continues from afar over things like Friday Night Lights, RW/RR Challenges, SYTYCD...you know, the finer things in life.

This morning I was thinking about how habit rules my life without me even realizing it. And I would imagine that I'm not alone. This thought came to me today after I had some laptop trouble at work. Between the hours of 8:30 and 10:00am I received the blue screen of death upwards of seven times always followed by my computer automatically restarting. Not exactly ideal in terms of productivity. After my new IT (best) friend took a look he announced, "I think you might have a virus".

Perfect. My computer caught the swine flu.

Thirty minutes later and I had my very own "loaner laptop" to get me through the day. I had my email. I had the Internet. I should have been set, right?

WRONG.

I may as well have been my 85 year-old grandfather trying to figure this thing out. I had no links saved as favorites. I struggled to remember passwords. There were no contacts auto-populating in my emails. My shortcuts to files were no longer on my desktop. Not to mention the loaner introduced me to the world of Vista.

Oh boy. I was lost.

And this led my mind to wander through all of the habits I've fallen into on a daily basis and marvel at how my life could get so turned upside down by the slightest unbalance in my routine. Like the time a weekly report at work got delayed by ONE day and it felt as though the world would end. What?! You mean I have to analyze this data on THURSDAY? But that's what I do on WEDNESDAY!  Can. Not. Compute. System. Crashing. And then my head exploded.

So I've decided to give myself a challenge - feel free to join me. The challenge is this: To simply be more aware. To live consciously instead of just going through the motions. And to possibly throw myself a curve ball every so often.

We'll start of slow. Maybe tomorrow morning I'll by a different flavor of Vitamin Water. Or I might just sleep on the left side of the bed tonight instead of the right. Or if I'm feeling really crazy, I'll analyze that data on Friday instead of Wednesday.

But let's not get too carried away.

You can find me here: http://thehardestthingandtherightthing.blogspot.com/
(And let's not judge the name of my blog, okay? We'll just let that one slide.)

4 comments:

Maria said...

Yea Steph, I love it. I agree - I spend way too much time stressing if Brooklyn doesn't want to take her nap at the normal time, or if something unexpected pops up to throw my routine off.

Breona said...

I wish you guest bloggers would post a little pic of yourself just for kicks. On the routines, I love something to throw me off. Its always more memorable?

Alaina said...

Stephanie! I love it. And living consciously has been a goal of mine lately, a sort of 'stop-and-smell-the-roses' sort of approach. And, for the record, it's actually growing in popularity in the whole mental-health world. So keep it up.

NatAttack said...

Steph--you fully delivered as I knew you would. Brill. <3

Definitely, maybe, probaby related posts:

If NatA! posted a photo with this blog, here it is!