Today was going to be my day to sleep. Not forever, just until late into the morning.
I’ve enjoyed the past few weeks, but I’ve honestly been working or doing major activities ever since August 22nd. My days at home have been packed with morning meetings or events, and my weekends have been filled with fun gatherings with family, friends, and even an occasional speaking engagement. Again, I’m not complaining… I was just looking forward to some sleep.
…but early this morning, my house felt warm. It woke me up. I didn’t think too much about it at the time as I do program my AC to not turn on as frequently in the morning–but I thought I had made sure it would be cool, allowing my slumber to continue late into the morning.
I did a few things around the house in the morning, but started to really notice the temperature. It was then that I realized–my AC was broken.
This isn’t a good thing when you live in Arizona.
Now my day was thrown a bit off. Originally, I had planned to leave my house and run some necessary errands, preparing for a part of a retreat I’m doing tomorrow, some communication with clients, and packing for my flight out on Sunday for an event I’m doing Monday. Now, I had to wait around for the AC repairman.
Oh yeah, and I had to pick up my house. I’ll be honest and say that when I hit a super busy season of rapid fire trips in and out of my house, it can get a bit messy. I’ll dump a suitcase on the floor to quickly repack it with other things. I’ll have a stack or two of mail I need to sort. Right now, I live alone. This isn’t too much of a problem. I always clean it when I have more than two days at home in a row (I had planned to do a deep cleaning next week), but now I had an AC repairman on his way.
So my priorities shifted. I quickly cleaned. My other plans for the day were thrown off.
The house got clean (I still want to go deeper with it next week), but I felt scattered. The AC was repaired.
But half of my day was over.
I started to think about how perhaps my procrastination led to this whole situation. I could have signed up for a maintenance plan for the AC unit (something I’ve now done) and maybe that would have solved the problem before it started. I could have gradually cleaned my house and taken the 15 minutes after a long trip (even though I may be getting home well past midnight) to put a few things away, or sort through at least that day’s mail.
But I didn’t and I haven’t.
And because of this, I felt scattered at wasted part of my day.
Does this happen to you? Sure, we might be prepared. We might be ready to do our activity or host our event, but are you so prepared that you can handle when a few twists and turns are thrown your direction? In those moments are you able to place your focus on the solution or are you trying to make up for lost time?
I’m going to work to a be a bit more prepared in the coming weeks. That way if things don’t go wrong, I might actually be able to catch a few extra moments of shuteye on those rest days.