I was really proud of myself yesterday morning as I was driving into work.
I had had a great weekend, thoroughly enjoying Jared’s Homecoming After-Party, going to sleep very late to make sure I was at hand when needed, waking up early on Sunday, taking an early afternoon nap, and then knocking out all kinds of stuff to prepare me for the week.
I was feeling really proud and totally in control. As a matter of fact, I was even modeling to my seventh grader how you can use Sundays to set the tone for the week.
I had an early Monday morning meeting in Altamonte Springs – not too bad on the traffic going up, but a wee bit blistering on the traffic coming down. And I sat down at my desk at about 9:45, reviewing the calendar and getting ready. I looked over the appointments, telephone conference calls, and so forth, and I was all set.
And then it began.
• I got an urgent call from somebody who needed to have something happen immediately in his life and in his business. It was not out of the blue. I was aware of it last week. However, last week it was a simple event to be handled. This week, it was a crisis. I had to handle it immediately.
• It was then followed by a call from the school. Apparently, Isabella wasn’t feeling well and some precautions had to be taken. The crisis subsided and Isabella turned out to be fine, but that was another twenty minutes.
• One of my colleagues walked in with a presentation in front of some forty sophisticated professionals with an implicit – although respectful – plea for assistance. Of course, that needed to be addressed.
• Apparently, financials were missing in the document that I thought had been put to bed and I had to circle back to find out where they were.
• A client who had been sitting on a set of documents for over a month suddenly saw the light and needed to have them modified and finalized by the end of the day so that they could close on a relationship they had been “wooing” for several months.
• Janet called me to let me know that she was going to be working with several other mothers for a surprise event for the graduating seniors, so she had to leave the office early to get there in time.
• After a month and a half, I got an email from my cousin in Italy telling me that the documents were ready to be signed (although in Italian) and he needed to get a quick turnaround for the Court in Italy.
• And on it went. I never did get to anything I had originally planned on doing.
I finally managed to make it home by 7:00 – it could have been worse – dictating this blog while listening to Amy Winehouse (the irony doesn’t escape me) on the Pink Martini Radio selection of Pandora and wondering exactly when and how I lost control of the day.
It simply made me think, with a wry smile on my face, that as much as we would like to think that schedules look simple in Outlook, life is not nearly that easy to foster.