Day 344 - I'm Not Late...Yet.

In general I do not arrive any where late.

I know this is a bold statement, but I really don't. I can't stand being late. It gives me a type of anxiety I can't even describe. Ask Justin. I have no idea why - but it always has. I don't like waiting for people and I don't like people having to wait for me. I guess I'm impatient.

However when you live in the city and you don't have a car you are unfortunately at the mercy of public transportation which does NOT care if it gets you anywhere on time (and as you all know, my current employment does not allow for cabs). While normally I pad my travel time so as to make up for this blatant disregard for schedules on public transit's part, sometimes you just can't make it work.

Which is when I developed a lovely little mental strategy that has reduced my stress level immensely. It is as follows:

Don't stress about being late until you are actually late.

Simply enough, right? Because I found that when I'm running late the anxiety starts to build from there. I play all these mental math games like - "I'm supposed to be there in 20 minutes, but the bus normally takes 15 minutes and who knows how long I'll have to wait for it to come...dammit why isn't the #74 on bustracker. Hmm, I could jog up to the Blue Line which would save me 7 minutes, but hard to say how the #70 will pan out. Such a spotty bus..." You get the idea. Half the time I end up getting to my destination on time (I tend to run to places to make up time. Literally, run.) and I had all this unnecessary stress for the last half hour.

So now I tell myself I'm not allowed to be stressed out until it is actually past the time I'm supposed to be somewhere. Supposed to be there by 7p and it's only 6:50p? No stress. 7:01? Now I am allowed to stress. Because no one knows you're late at 6:50...in fact, you aren't LATE yet.

Semantics I suppose - but this little trick has saved me an enormous amount stress lately.