Wake Up
Shave
Shower
Dress
Commute
Park on level P3
Ride up the elevator
Enter office
Check e-mail
Make coffee
Work
Lunch
Work
Leave office
drive home
enter house
sit on couch
run
eat dinner
watch tv
sleep
(repeat)
This is my routine. I do this five days a week and have been doing this since October. Just let me premise this with the fact that I am very happy with my job and excited about the opportunities it offers. All the people I work with are awesome and I have been afforded a lot to experience high quality individuals in an exciting work atmosphere.
However, being a 23-year old kid sometimes flares up and the corporate life overwhelms me. This probably happens a couple (2-3) times a week and is very short-lived. I began thinking about this when it occured to me one day around 12:30pm that a year ago I was cruising up and down the west coast on spring break. And at the present time I was currently sitting in a chair eating lunch on a paper towel alone in the breakroom.
Quite a change of scenery - one that is all the more frightening when I think about how fast the time has gone. People would always say that -man time has flown by- and everyone nods in response...but I don't think it really mattered how fast time was going until now. After all, I know time flies when you are having fun...but isn't it supposed to slow down when you are working? I guess not...
I started thinking back over the last 6 months since I've started working and what also frightened me is my inability to remember it. It is filed away into one of those Bruce Almighty file cabinets in my brain. Literally, what do I do on a weekly basis that is memorable? What, if anything, is creating memories? I find it hard to fathom that the main things I remember occured over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a day I took off in February. Little to nothing that occurs in my life is memorable during a week - unless some part of that routine I wrote earlier is changed. Is this bad? Or is this something to get used to?
Part of me feels like I really dove into this whole corporate thing way too early - and part of me feels like I'm nervously freaking out for no reason - am I placing too much value on free time as a 23 year old or too little value on time at a desk as a 23 year old? I guess there is value in both but I'd like to live a memorable life and I definitely don't want to wake up 10 years from now remembering a couple days of each of those years...
6 comments:
As mundane as it seems, you are learning so much about yourself that you will realize later. That's how I feel about that same time in my life. I was working a truly horrible job where I sat in a cubicle all day entering data. But just like then I looked back on my college days with sad longing, I now look back on the cubicle days with great appreication for my own endurance! Be proud of your stick-to-it-ness (is that a Mayfield made up word?)
I'm definitely not even feeling that it is mundane - just that it is a routine...something that I never had in college probably because I didn't want one! I'm getting used to the wake up every morning thing quite nicely although coffee is now a necessary part of my daily diet...
Your routine looks alot like mine, except for the shaving part. I also usually allow about 3.5 mins for opening my blinds and watering my plant. I feel like the guy from About a Boy when he talks about the 'units' of time in his day.
I guess after a while you just get in auto-pilot zone and don't have to really think about what you actually do during the week. Maybe you should break your routine, like make coffee and THEN check your email. see if that helps. :)
welcome to your early twenties. i almost wrote a book about this whole season of life like 20 times. then i turned 26 and i couldn't say i was in my early twenties anymore.
but seriously. it's like an epidemic. everyone goes through it. and the paper towel alone thing is definitely quite the contrast to spring break. but really, you do what you do so one day, when your kids have spring break, you can afford to take them somewhere fun. right?
yeah, not sure. sorry i can't be a real berth of wisdom here. i do love you. that has to count for something.
:: act as if what you do makes a difference. it does. :: william james.
i think that you're incredible and that life is going to pan out just the way it's supposed to.
I felt a lot like this when I first moved to Dallas, except my Friday was
"work as hard as I can so I can leave early,
drive 3 hours to Abilene,
spend every second possible for the next 2 days with heath,
get very little sleep,
stay in Abilene until the last possible minute,
drive 3 hours back to Dallas,
get home,
maybe shower,
go to sleep,
wake up,
repeat."
Then I started remembering that I'm on this earth for a VERY different reason and I needed to focus not on what I did for the first 8 hours of the day, but on what I did in the hours that followed work. Suddenly I began hanging out with friends and investing in others around me. Volunteering at church and being involved in something that mattered outside of me and my life radically changed my perspective on my same ole job. Honestly, its the only thing that helps. If not, welcome to a world of self consumption and apathy because, for me, when each day is exactly the same as the one before - distinguished only by the what Tivo’s recording - our Father's meaning for us becomes obsolete. Suddenly I forget that this isn't home and the job hasn't been done. Suddenly, I become of the world and my entire focus is blurred. Keep thinking, brother. Not being ok with the same old stuff isn’t a bad thing.
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