Not Working Through My Lunch Today

I’ve developed a new habit that I need to break: eating at my desk and working through my lunch.

Used to be that I had something booked for every day of the week over my lunch hour: WW (the program formerly known Weight Watchers) on Tuesdays, lunch out with co-workers on Wednesdays, two fitness classes a week, and one day for either walking outside or blogging at a coffee shop or other non-desk location.

Since I’ve started taking Krav Maga twice a week, I don’t take the kickboxing class on Mondays anymore — two butt-kickings a day is one too many. I still do WW on Tuesdays (unless I have a looming deadline) and Girls’ Lunch on Wednesdays (unless my cohort N is out of the office), and sometimes there’s a fitness class on Thursday or Friday I’ll want to take… but not always.

I’ve also been heads-down on a major project at work for the past… well, several months, anyway. I’m learning more about DAX and Power BI the more I develop and the further I get into the project, and I’m enjoying it overall… but there are more than the usual quota of roadblocks in this project, it seems. Ambiguous requirements, changing requirements, interpersonal issues, and other various unexpected roadblocks have really prolonged this release. All of us on the project are ready for it to be over… and it still has a few phases planned for after we get the current release submitted for QA testing.

I’ve heard that the brain uses a large amount of the calories a body consumes. If that’s true, it also explains why I’m so beat every evening when I get home. Monday and Wednesday nights are karate nights, which means that’s pretty much all that gets done, whether we eat takeout at the dojo between classes, or we come home between classes and have a quick meal before I go back out and Connor stays home with a sitter. It’s worth the time and effort (and money) for both of us, no doubt about it… but it does incur an opportunity cost of sorts.

My sewing hobby has really taken up most of my brainpower and me-time outside of work. (How is it, then, that I rarely make anything for myself? That’s a topic for another day….) This past summer and fall, it even pre-empted most of my gardening time… and, unfortunately, it shows. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I even got out to cut back the peonies before it snowed in November. I certainly haven’t gone out there this winter — not when I could be sewing, or talking with Aaron, or playing with Connor, or whatever else seems more interesting to do indoors, even on the rare occasion when it’s above freezing outside and not rainy or muddy or windy.

Sewing has also been taking up the evening me-time that I used to spend on blogging after Connor goes to bed. This year may be the first that my Year In Review doesn’t get posted in January. I started it when I had some downtime over lunches at work in December and early January, and once I decided on a format (photo post!), I never managed to carve out the time to sit at my Dell and pull good, relevant photos for each topic. It’s been a tradition for 15 years, so I’m not going to just throw my hands in the air and skip 2019 entirely… but it’s never been this late before.

I often feel like I can’t do anything before finishing the next thing on the list of things I “should” be doing… so if I don’t make the time, or if I can’t get over that Motivation Bridge to do that one thing, I just don’t do anything. Which is silly, yes, but it’s a Thing. It’s what I do. I’m working on that.

I’m working on that right now, in fact, by writing this blog post when I still have a Year In Review in my Drafts folder.

Tonight, I’ll be working on a birthday present for gifting tomorrow afternoon.

(Things that are time-sensitive get moved to the top of the list… and things that can wait tend to get pushed down the list until they’re no longer relevant.)

It would behoove me to consciously dedicate some time to making my brain and my environment a pleasant place to be, instead of constantly feeding my dopamine craving by making stuff. Physically organizing my space at home, cultivating a regular meditation practice, returning to writing and journaling… all of those things need to get bumped up in the Urgent queue. They don’t seem urgent or time-sensitive, but they really are. They’re cumulative — fail to do a little now, and end up needing to do a lot more later.

I still spent lunch at my desk today, but at least I was doing something for myself this time.

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