I am very good at contingency planning. I knew it would be difficult to post to my blog while I was traveling, so I wrote posts ahead of time and scheduled their postings. What I didn’t anticipate was how seemingly typical days could get away from me from time to time. That is what happened this week and why two days have gone by with no new posts.
This Friday should have been like any other. I had a couple of early-morning meetings and then nothing until mid-afternoon. I intended to use that window to get some work done, including writing that day’s blog post. Then I received an email pleading with me to attend a six hour meeting to represent a commission I sit on. I was able to rejigger a couple of meetings to make my attendance possible. But, I somehow missed that by attending that meeting, I had a day with nothing but back-to-back meetings. That meant that I neither got through my email, got any of my work done nor wrote any blog posts.
I thought about writing a post when I got home Friday evening, but honestly, I was just too tired. I knew that not writing anything would take me out of the running for the Blogathon. But as this was an entirely self-imposed goal, I decided to let myself off the hook for once. This was an unusual decision for me and should have been a red flag about what was really going on.
The next day I slept for 18 hours. I could have slept more, but I forced myself out of bed. It took me a little while to figure out why I was so exhausted. I eventually remembered that I had flown in from the east coast earlier in the week. I hit the ground running the morning after my return and kept going full speed until I crashed.
My body had been clearly sending me a message that I was ignoring. Eventually, I lost the battle of wills with myself. I took the remainder of yesterday off to give myself some more time to recover. This morning I woke up fairly early. I wouldn’t say I was quite back to my normal state, but I was feeling much better than I had for the previous couple of days.
The moral of this tale is that sometimes there are priorities that supersede personal goals. If the deadline had been externally imposed, I would have found a way to get it done. I might have skipped the long meeting or taken a nap before returning to work. But, in retrospect I made the right decision. The long meeting was well worth the time I gave it and I am glad I was able to be there. And obviously, I needed the sleep and some time off.