Monday, February 9, 2015

Snow day *chaos*

Snow days are chaotic. It's not that thing are chaotic around my house. We all pretty much just sit around on the computer, shovel snow, and go out for occasional snow-shoeing or skiing.

But I have to say that snow days generate a bit of chaos in my head. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would call this psychic entropy--which is when there's no order to your thoughts. For me, this happens whenever my routine is brutally ripped out from underneath me, like on snow days.

Am I really complaining about a day off?

Yes... Yes, I guess I am. But it's my own fault. What I need is more flexibility, more ability to switch from flow-generating activity to flow-generating activity on the fly. I need a mental gear box.

I shouldn't need routine. I shouldn't need for everything to proceed as scheduled. Serendipity should be welcome. Disruption and interruption should be invited. Because lots of awesome things happen when no plans have been made, like snow-shoeing with my 18-year old daughter, who also had a snow day. That's when relationships happen.

So that's my goal: To always be ready to take full advantage of serendipitous interruptions to my routine, to always have flow-generating activities ready to go at a moment's notice, and always be ready to engage in relationships whenever the opportunity presents itself, and to always maintain a flexible mindset that's focused on people and what's really important, rather than a mechanical, algorithmic schedule and tasks that I run through like some workaholic robot.

So I suppose the 4 or 5 snowdays we've had so far this winter have been good. they've shown me another area for improvement.

And I think this is a big one.

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