What the Hell

I realize that when I do stupid things my first impulse is to explain away my stupidity, to rationalize it. Sometimes though it is amazing at how truly caught up in my thoughts I can get, so any opportunity I would have otherwise had to divert my journey towards stupidity is woefully ignored.

Monday morning I got up to take my shower so I could get dressed and go to work. My body felt like lead. I had one drink with dinner the night before, but that morning it felt as if I had four. After my shower and feeling somewhat better, I opened my cabinet where I keep a small clock to keep track of the time and make sure I don't dawdle.

What the hell. It read 2:45 a.m.

It had been a rough start to the weekend. Two days before the weekend, I was in a meeting with a large number of people sitting in a conference room with floor length windows facing the parking lot. Although purportedly watching a presentation, we were also watching the torrential rain come down. The rain was gushing out of the sky as if we were in the tropics and the monsoon season was upon us.

Someone's phone chirped like a frog. We laughed. He glanced at his Smartphone and silenced it. Then, another person's phone sounded like a train whistle. Within seconds two others had alerts. If you know your alerts, I believe one was Chimes and the other Synth. It was a Smart Phone symphony. My phone joined the chorus with Bulletin sounds, or perhaps it was newsflash, I don't recall. I showed the screen to my low-tech coworker next to me: FLASH FLOOD IN EFFECT for Minnetonka until 3:00 PM. We looked outside again. There was no river, no stream, not even a pond nearby, so we were good. We didn't have to evacuate to high ground just yet.

Then, my husband called. My intuition already on alert, I answered. I stepped into the hallway to talk.

"We have a problem," he tells me. In a rush, I only heard the words, "Water, basement, bailing and can you go to the hardware store." In order to leave, I had to do about a half dozen things before I could fly out the door with car keys in hand. But within minutes the same people watching the storm were now watching me make a run out to my car and then leave. Some had no doubt not even noticed that I had left.

The long story made short, we had two inches of water in a corner of the downstairs guest bedroom. I mopped up the water and pressed endless towels into the white carpet while David installed a sump pump in the window well, redirected a downspout that under normal conditions was not a problem and then purchased extra de-humidifiers to do the rest of the work to dry things out.

We had received over four inches of rain during the time I walked into the conference room to when I ran through the downpour to get to my car some three hours later. Still, by Sunday night, all was good.

I have been reading a book called The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal. Our willpower is actually made up of three distinct components: "I will," "I won't" and "I want." In my own interpretation of this, the "I want" is the strongest. When I am standing in the middle of our cafeteria at work to buy lunch, the "I will" power tells me that I had planned to eat salad. The "I won't" power tells me I won't have the grilled cheese on sourdough with bacon and tomato and french fries.

But, in the moment that matters, remembering the "I want" power which reminds me that I want to fit into my skinny jeans trumps the other two willpower intentions quite easily. There is no fight, no dilemma and no drama. Everything I do is either helping me towards my goal or it is hindering my progress.

In her book, which I would highly recommend to anyone working on any sort of goal (i.e. everyone), there is a chapter called "What the Hell." If I remember correctly, we do some silly mental gymnastics that are worth noting. Although eating a salad is really just a means to a goal, we often mix that up with the goal itself. So, we turn eating the salad into being able to reward ourselves later with chocolate cake. Silly, but I do it all the time. If we remember that eating salad and passing up the chocolate cake are both things that bring about our goal faster, we would not feel as guilty afterwards when we "reward" ourselves. When we do this, we often feel that all is lost and the only way to console ourselves is with a pint of double chocolate ice cream to wash down the chocolate cake.

So, how does any of this have to do with me waking up at 2:45 and managing to drag my butt out of bed and into the shower?

On Sunday night, I started to iron my clothes for the next day and blew a circuit. We had so many appliances running to dry out the basement the iron cycling on was just too much draw. No worries. I trudged downstairs, shut off one of the dehumidifiers, reset the circuit breaker and returned to my ironing. I turned the dehumidifier back on when I was done.

So by Sunday night, I had not noticed that my bedroom clock was on the same circuit and had reset itself to 12:00. Having worked on my iPad until bedtime I knew what time it was and had not even glanced at my now blinking clock.

When I woke up and it was time to get up according to the clock, I was disheartened that it was so quickly time to get up. But, having been on a roll with finding renewed source of willpower in other areas, I really wanted to prove to myself that my "I will" power was stronger than my "I won't."

I even remember shaking my head at my blinking clock thinking, What the hell? Why is it blinking? I hadn't heard the power go out in the middle of the night as is common in our neighborhood. I thought maybe it just needed the 9 volt battery backup replaced. I had totally forgotten about the circuit breaker.

After all of this, I now have a new set of "I will," "I won't" and "I want" goals. First, I will listen to both my intuition and more importantly to my body. Second, I won't forget to change the 9 volt battery that would have saved me from all this trouble. Finally, my "want" is that I want to get more sleep tonight so I am posting this now. What the hell. It's time for lights off. Good night.