I’ve been obsessing thinking more about this check-y-loo habit. I’d love to bump creative time earlier and push checking e-mail and stuff later into the day. (Later than the second my eyes pop open.)
And I’m trying to be patient with myself. (Ow.) And curious.
The end of my corporate career was bad. Bad like Sunday night blues that start early Saturday afternoon. Bad like epic anxiety with occasional panic and tearful frustration thrown in for kicks.
Looking back now, I think it probably needed to get that bad in order for me to walk away. For a million reasons. Because change is scary. Because I was “successful”. Because I had a very specific, technical advanced degree only applicable to this one field. Because I was making a lot of money.
Because I didn’t really have a clear idea what I’d do next. Yeah, there was that.
At the end I was letting projects slip and letting people down. Including myself. Bleargh. But I couldn’t be bothered to do anything about the slipping and slacking. I was too busy panicking.
A pattern is born.
I used my Blackberry for an alarm clock. Cozy, right? Every morning my alarm would ring and before I brushed my teeth or wiped the sleep from eyes, I’d check my e-mail.
Really, I was checking to see exactly how awful the day ahead promised to be. I was checking to see if some partner was mad, waiting on me for something, or annoyed that I hadn’t gotten back to them.
I never checked my e-mail and then felt happy or grounded. Today’s going to be just fantastic! Pffft.
Even when my inbox was free of bombs, I didn’t feel any relief. Just a sense of borrowed time. If it wasn’t e-mail, it would be the ominous red light indicating voicemail. Or a file on my chair.
All just a bunch of symbols. Tell me inbox: How should I feel today? How will my day go?
And here we are.
Wouldn’t you know, the pattern stuck. Because it’s been more than a year, and I still want to check in with the outside world first thing in the morning.
And now, even though my inbox is a pretty jovial place, I sometimes find myself checking with a twinge of apprehension. Like there might be a shoe or a request I don’t want to honor. Or I really don’t know what. Something. Something that could wreck me with the anxiety of the old days.
And these days, my e-mail is more like a festival of fun. Whee! Notes from friends! Client appointments! Thoughtful blog comments! (Oh, love those!) But it doesn’t really matter what the content is. I still don’t like this impulse of first looking out there to see how I should feel in here.
Curious. And experimenting.
For me, just noticing what’s underneath this impulse is huge. And I think I could start a series on these former-career-related heebie-jeebie patterns and habits that are still lurking. Maybe I will.
Anyway, I’m curious… Anyone else have these lurker patterns? Or thoughts for unwinding them?
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I love “check-y-loos”!
I developed a pretty bad web-surfing-to-avoid-work habit at my corporate job. Any time I hit a snag, I clicked over to a browser window and tried to ignore the problem. I got my work done, but I made the process more painful than it needed to be. I still have this troublesome tic, even when I’m doing creative work I love. Freedom and Leechblock are my friends.
I was wound pretty tight when I left my job. It took a few years to get the 9-5 out of my system–and it was a great place to work, I had a wonderful manager, not a lot of meetings, plenty of peace and quiet for an introvert. But it didn’t feed my soul the way coaching does.
I really wonder how many of us who’ve escaped corporate hell have this same response to checking email – that sense of dread – that sticks with us.
I know I’ve got it. There’s always that little part of me that is expecting some kind of bad news. What a sad way to start the day.
No wisdom to add, really, but I definitely share the impulse.
I’ll report back in a few months .. most of the time, I do not have a sense of dread from my Inbox, but there have been a few months recently where I did. Ugh. It was horrific. I kept trying to figure out how to hide the offending folder (where those emails were being directed to) so I could continue working. Except I still felt the dread, so I may as well have checked it. My personal mail, however, I enjoy .. so maybe that enjoyment will remain.
Speaking of check-y-loos though .. I sat down last night to do my Thursday photo post. Two hours later, I was about to go to bed and thought, “What did I sit down to do anyway? Oh right .. my blog post.” Sheesh.
Oh yeah, the “good old days” of checking for fires before heading to the office. I left my job just about 2 years ago…and I still check my email first thing every morning. Part pattern, part “if I don’t do it I’ll feel anxious until I do.”
I have noticed lately that the tiny fragment of dread is starting to be replaced with a tiny fragment of hope that there might be comments on my blog.
Totally, totally have this pattern too — and many other left over bad habits from corporate life! Good times.