The Art of Shifting Gears

Rude Awakening
noun
Def: "A sudden and often unwelcome realization."

I can think of no better way to blanket my day-to-day experience: I am constantly riddled with rude awakenings.

I am the kind of person that frequently gets lost in work. Hours fly happily by without notice. I am also the kind of person that positively loathes distraction, but can't seem to be completely and consistently rid of it.

Being a freelance creative, the irony couldn't be thicker. This seems to be the employment type of choice for the pathologically workaholic and attention deficit. We are people famous for conceptualization and notorious for incompletion.

Hence the rudeness of my awakenings. I love my business, but my business needs more than just love to thrive; it needs order. For it to maintain order means that I frequently have to change direction at a moment's notice, which means I am pulled kicking and screaming out of my work and forced to switch gears. "Put on a different hat, and put out a different fire," seems as good a mantra as any, eh?

What have I learned from this sharp and recurring pain? Just with any other pain related problem, the quicker I stop whining and perform the shift the better. The truth is that this shift will probably always feel rude, but that's just it! It's the shifting itself that feels weird, I have no qualms with being businessy, or financial, or orderly. It's just the right-brain to left-brain jump itself that begets the strangeness and the discomfort.

So, my solution:

Bite the bullet. Decide to bite it quicker than yesterday. Strive that tomorrow you'll bite it even faster than today. Do not expect this shift to EVER feel normal, do not even hope for this. Instead realize this is a process to be streamlined, not a process to be enjoyed.