The morning rush

I'm writing this at 9:30AM. It's Monday after the Thanksgiving break. I was fortunately able to largely disconnect from Wednesday to Sunday.

Our trip was planned to end today. It was cut short due to a snowstorm.

Every part of my consciousness wants to rush into my daily to-do list. I just finished transferring it from my hand written notebook entry to Todoist, my personal task manager of choice.

Instead, I'm choosing to spend a few minutes writing this post. It's an attempt to slow down the morning rush.

Today it started with waking at 5:10AM. I wanted to get in a quick cycling workout. I rushed through my morning routine to do that.

That rush transitioned to getting ready for work and my son to school. There's a bunch of food prep involved, since I cook daily and bring my own lunch and food to work.

Then it's down to the bike room, load me, my son and his stuff on my bike, and roll us to his school. By this point, I've been feeling the time pressure intensify, pretty much since waking. On the way to school I feel the intensity increase exponentially.

I drop him off then continue rolling to my co-working space. I consciously unload my stuff, including a backpack of provisions.

Because I set the intention early, I pause long enough to write my daily priority list in a notebook. The conscious act of hand writing it helps slow my mind down long enough to help what I know is important to rise to the surface. I then transfer the list to Todoist.

That brings me full circle to the start of this post. I feel like the workday can only begin now, 4+ hours after waking. I feel grateful, though, that at least some of those 4+ hours were also spent setting a grounding foundation for the day 🙏