2020-05-20 — Easing Up On the Throttle

Hiya, folks. 🙂

I think the plain truth is that I’m not quite ready to do that morning meditation thing yet. Not that it’s not super super super important… It may well turn out to be one of the most important things I ever get in the habit of doing.

However, there are some other things I’m going to need to master first before I can realistically commit myself to this routine and hope to have success at actually making it a daily routine.

What could possibly be more important? Well… my inability to say “no” to jobs when they come in is one of my biggest issues. I’m constantly so busy that I get to bed late, and the phone is often ringing before I’m out of bed (and not because I’m sleeping in), and so I’m working most of the day from the moment I get up until I go to bed at night.

Long long days.

So while the meditating is super important. Being able to say “no” is more important at this point because until I can do that, I’m never gonna get a regular morning meditation in because I’m gonna be sleeping right up to the point my first customer calls. Then it’ll be work work work until I write in this journal and crash again, far later into the night than I should. It’s the same reason my exercise is happening right before bed instead of in the morning. I’m working before I even get out of bed–literally.

With that as it is, it’s going to do me more harm than good right now (emotionally) to have one area where I’m trying to force things when I’m just not ready for them. So… I’m gonna pull that goal as one of my current daily tracked goals because if I keep it, I’m likely to get discouraged that I can’t get myself to do it. And if I get discouraged, I’m likely to slip elsewhere, too.

I’ll still leave the morning meditation thing there as something I want to do and will try to do each day, but I’m gonna have it as a “wahoo… bonus!” addition to a day when I do actually do it, instead of a “crap, didn’t do it again today either” kind of thing.

So… with that opening…

I eased up on the throttle today. 🙂 I still worked a long day, but it was an “easy” day.  I only did two “half” jobs today (a lockout job and a freebie for a repeat customer), purposely pushing out the other stuff I had and just focusing on getting David what he needed for his jobs and doing clerical work.

I’m gonna try and take it easy tomorrow as well. We’ll see how I do.

I’ll try and practice the “no” thing tomorrow. I did turn down jobs today, so that’s something, but I need to sit down and figure out what my boundaries are, any exceptions to those boundaries, and then I need to stick to them. It’s a lot easier for me to stick to something when it’s concrete (e.g no new jobs after 6 p.m.) vs. when it’s imprecise (say “no” more often). I’ve added that to my to-do list–create a boundaries plan. It’ll take some time to ponder what I’m willing to do in that regard, but it’ll likely be extremely helpful.

So… as usual, the morning was spent getting ready for the rest of the day. I ended up having David do the big job I was going to do, so, that freed me up to try and communicate with customers more, postpone what I could, relax a little, shoot the breeze a little bit with my AutoZone friends, and go home relatively early (Home by 7 today, I think. I still worked and worked after getting home, having to get all the paperwork done for my submitting of sales tax for the month of April (due date was today), so I got that all taken care of.

Anyway, so that’s the day. 

#1. I’m grateful to have had a lighter day. I was burnt to a crisp today and wasn’t much good to anyone anyway, so the day “off” was needed and probably pretty much necessary.

#2. I’m grateful to still have really nice spring weather even though we’re coming up on June. I think next week it’s gonna start getting into the Arkansas nasty, so I’ll enjoy this last little bit and will try to remember it existed when the dog days of summer roll in.

#3. I’m grateful to be building up more friendships with the AutoZone peeps at other stores than my home store. Fun to have fun people to interact with, and I actually get a decent amount of business from them.

#4. I’m grateful that David was able to figure out a car that had been challenging multiple people for a long time. It was ’67 Barracuda that had ’92 360 swap in it, but it wasn’t getting any spark or fuel. They had tried and tried and tried to get it running, and I believe the owner is not long for this world and had been hoping to get it running before he died, and David made it happen today, so that was super cool. That job was a referral from one of the AutoZone peeps who’d been trying to help him figure it out for a long time now. So that’s super cool.

#5. I’m grateful for those reading my blog. I’ve had some old friends message me about it… a high school friend, a college friend… it’s fun to reconnect. As always, I hope there’s something that each of you can take away from it to inspire/motivate/encourage you.

So… exercise. Here’s a thought for all you lactose annoyed or intolerant people out there:

Don’t have a whole glass worth of milk before you go out to exercise. I still need to exercise for the day and am about to head out, but I ate dinner not that long ago (it’s 11:48 p.m. right now), and it was two full bowls of granola with milk instead of yogurt, and my stomach was not happy. (I suppose it also could have been the mixture of the 4 apples I ate before the cold cereal?)

Anyway, loves and hugs. Add a day to each of my things. I’m gonna head out for a 20 minute midnight run.

Lift the world.

~ stephen

45, 53, 44, 18, 11