J.P.

Even though we live in the Mountain Standard Time Zone, my workday is pretty much relegated to Central Daylight Time to approximate the meeting schedule of folks on the East Coast. I am not alone in this approach, I have peers that live on the west coast that work an EDT or CDT schedule and don’t seem to be the worse for wear. At least twice a week this leaves me with a couple of 6:00 a.m. meetings on my schedule. I try not to be blurry-eyed when attending these meetings, especially when I’m leading the whole affair. 

I’m not a morning person. I try very hard to be a morning person and many Professional Growth books tout the advantages of starting your day before God, but try as I might, I’m just not a morning person. I fake it fairly well. Since I work from home and, outside of team meetings at work, I can set my own schedule, I occasionally divide my work day into chunks with a brief nap in between. It works.

This morning I started my day at 5:30 a.m. and I just felt a little “off”. I wasn’t physically ill, aside from a slight bloody nose that can be attributed to the dry desert air. I just didn’t feel quite right. I decided to do something I haven’t done in a very long time and I called off from work today. I sent a message to the team director and basically said “see you tomorrow”.

I then went back to bed for a couple of hours.

Upon waking I found myself feeling “mostly reset” but not what I would call optimal. So I decided to watch a couple episodes of “Bewitched” (my favorite show of all time) and just rest my brain. I didn’t focus on reorganizing anything or getting anything accomplished, I just relaxed.

I have a hard time doing that.

I then ended up taking another nap, this time about 30 minutes. Upon waking I can now say I honestly feel like I’ve hit the reset button. I feel great.

Because I never take spontaneous time off from work like this, everyone in the family has inquired to my well-being and the director did ask if everything was OK when I reached out to him this morning. 

Sometimes we just need to take a mental health day and let the world pause the best we can. I’m ready to tackle the rest of the work week starting with tomorrow morning’s meetings. This is the proper way to start my 54th ride around the sun.

It’s a shame many schools have opted out of teaching cursive writing to students. Studies show typing notes on a keyboard, or even more expediently, skimming through a provided PowerPoint presentation, does not lend itself to comprehension or retention like writing something down.

Earlier this year I went to a “paperless” approach to work and over time I’m finding I don’t remember the smaller details about my various projects nearly as well versus when I was writing things down. I’m going to move to a more hybrid approach over the next couple of weeks to see if I can reverse this trend.

The thing about cursive writing, and penmanship in general, is that it was another expression of person’s individuality. I’ve always been curious as to what a person’s handwriting looks like. Some folks don’t have a lot of care as to what their handwritten prose looks like, others put a great deal into making it unique. I love that. It’s a shame it’s being lost with these younger generations.

While it is slower for many to write things down by hand versus typing it out on a computer keyboard, it has a certain sense of style. Perhaps in this day and age we just need to slow things down a little bit.