Changing Style

Thanks to Rudolf, I have been able to access some very interesting blog sites. One of them was Gloassdog, and not only is it a great read, it offers some help in html writing to beginners like me. I want to make my site more presentable, so I have been working at it for the past four hours, but wasn’t successful in changing the margin or colors. Ah, well, I’ll get it right. Soon, I hope!

Okay, that’s one way of changing style. But I am thinking something even more profound, like changing the style of daily life.

Last year, I was go, go, go. Things happened in positive ways, and they happened pretty smooth and easy. Talking about work. I was having so much fun, I hardly ever felt tired working.

Then several months ago, I just felt tired, tired, tired. I kept on looking for the reason why I got into such rut. Is it my feeling bad about my oldest son’s current situation? Is it menopause? Is it because the work is on plateau, and I have become a junky to new! fun! exciting! stuff?

I’ve been struggling with whatever I have been going through, but I guess in my struggle, progress was happening.

Because I am finally learning to work, do tedius administrative type of work at the office. I am learning to utilize daytime to work. (Okay, I’m up real late again tonight. But this isn’t work.) I’m following through with the stuff I was doing last year, which is vital in making real progress, not just skimming the surface.

Maybe doing “work” hasn’t changed, but my attitude and daily schedule have.

Work during “work hours”. Spend time on private stuff during night time and weekends. How normal! I’m so proud of myself for somehow stumbling into this solution. And now I can see things from the perspective of majority of office workers: how to make the most out of daytime work hours. More importantly, I have gained an insight into how people change, and their workstyles are changing at different speed. This is the heart of current theme everywhere in creating workplace that is effective.

I’m lucky. Where I work, although HR and admin departments’ official policy isn’t with it like maybe some other companies, but my boss gives us long, long leash. And our workplace is flexible that I can choose how I want to set up my work area. We can do anything we want based on our annual agreement on achieving the goals and objectives. So last year, when not at clients’ place, I got a lot of work done at home after the kids went to sleep. When at the office, I hung out, mostly talking with colleagues. Now I changed gear, I’ll go into the office to do creation work, not just to communicate and exchange information. Mind you, this is so rare in Japan. Ah, but you should have seen the rainbow I saw in Yokohama Saturday evening! I almost didn’t go out cycling. Didn’t feel up to it. But I had to, because otherwise, I would have hated myself for just continuing to lash out on my husband. And there it was, a huge arch of rainbow, double rainbow in fact, in eastern sky as the sun was setting. It was the first time I have ever witnessed such awsome phenomenan, appearance of rainbow from the start to the end when it all faded away. It was 30 minutes of thrilling experience.

A quote from Pamela McCarthy’s website: