Its hard for me to get going in the morning. First I press snooze a bunch of times. Unless of course I am hell bent on going to a 6am spin class and/or am in training mode, in which case I press snooze a maximum of one time and get my ass out of bed and into workout clothes. But usually I lie there for a minute and if my half-asleep brain can figure out a way to move the workout to the afternoon or evening, I reset my alarm and go back to sleep for at least another hour.

I’ve never been a morning person. In college, when I had an 11:00 class, I used to set my alarm for 9:00 so I could get a workout in. I even placed the alarm across the room so I would have to get up to reach it. Inevitably I would get up and walk across the room to press snooze every 9 minutes, modifying the plan gradually from “cardio and weights” to “jog to the gym, abbreviated weights, jog back” to “just a run” to “at least shower” to “oh crap its 10:40!!!!”

But now I am beginning to think I am not an any time of day person… I find myself spending surprisingly large amounts of time on the internet. Occasionally, I try to justify it… It’s not like I channel surf. I don’t even watch tv! Mostly though, I don’t even make any excuses, because my awareness of the issue is muted. If I were totally aware of it you see, I would have to admit it was a problem, and then I would have to do something about it. And that’s hard. So I avoid it.

Take Friday for instance, my day off. My plan was to get up and go for a short swim, then tend to some work stuff, laundry, and tax organizing. I got up sans alarm around 7:00. I drifted back to sleep till about 8:00 and finally decided to get out of bed around 8:20. By my calculations, I would arrive at the pool by 9:00, I would swim till say 9:40, then around 10:00 I would leave, getting home for 10:20… Obviously I had to eat breakfast first. Before I could eat breakfast however, I had to take the trash out. Upon going out I realized it was actually a nice day. Scratch the swim. It was actually a hiking day. Now I needed to see if anyone wanted to join me, but no one was answering so I left a couple of voicemails. So I couldn’t go just yet for that hike. What if they called me and decided they wanted to come after all just as I was cresting the summit? That would never do. I needed to kill some time. Plus I had some work to do on the conference I am co-chairing, so I opened up my computer.

I was very proud of myself because the first thing I did was research the contact information for the folks I am supposed to get in touch with regarding the conference. Obviously, this shows I am not addicted to email. I went to Hotmail second. Hotmail told me I had a few messages on Facebook. So I logged onto Facebook. One of my friend’s friends apparently started a Baltimore-based candy business and she had joined their group. So I went to go to their website. Mmmm, chocolate covered pretzels….. I returned to Hotmail. I had a message from COHomefinder.com alerting me to all the newly listed properties that met my criteria. I had to follow the links to view images of all my possible dream homes. I had finally exhausted the Hotmail check. Maybe something important went to my Junk file however. I had to check that. There I found a new message re:”Pamela, Do You Want It Bigger and Better.” Then I had to read some blogs. Just a few. I realized someone might have just emailed me while I was perusing blogs. Had to go back to Hotmail. My Citicard statement was now online. Ok, back to blogs. Oh my God how did it get to be 9:45 already???? My phone rang. It was Dan.

“What are you up to?” he wanted to know.
“I had left you a message. Did you want to hike Sanitas with me?” I asked.
“Yeah, I could do that.”
“Really!?” Yesssss! A reason to tear myself away from the computer!!
“Yeah. When did you want to go?”
“I just need to get dressed. But I have other stuff I could do. Do you have work to finish?”
“Yeah but I could work later. I was just sitting here, checking email, keeping the pace of things.”
“You were keeping the pace of things?” I had never heard this expression before.
“Yeah, keeping the pace of things,” Dan said, very matter of fact.
“What is that, like checking email, looking at blogs and getting ready to work!?” I squealed.
“Pretty much.”
“Did you make that up!!??? That is brilliant!!”
“Brilliant?” Dan said dubiously.
“Yes!! That’s what I’ve been doing this morning,too!!!”

Keeping the pace of things! Why didn’t I think of that??? I wasn’t wasting time!! I was keeping the pace of things. Keeping the pace of things. It was perfect. Thank you Dan, for redeeming me and my bad habits with that simple phrase.