The Efficiency Expert

Written yesterday afternoon...

This falls under strange things I notice about myself. I do things fast. Well, not all things, but most. I walk fast, I work fast, I write fast, I type fast, I think fast, I plan fast, I eat fast. Sometimes I don’t even bother with that whole chewing thing. Slows me down.

Most often, this weird need for speed to get things done and get them done fast works to my advantage. I can cram more in a day than if I plodded along at a slower pace. I can usually get 5 pages of writing done each morning before work. If something pops up and ruins my regularly scheduled plan, I can think fast, juggle things around and nary miss a step while I create a new one.

But sometimes this speed demon that lives inside of me can be a real pain in the posterior. For instance, when I’m reading, I have to constantly slow myself down. I keep wanting to burn ahead, see what happens, scan at top speed. But what if I miss something? And sometimes I do. I’ll get a few paragraphs ahead and stop short, going ‘huh…wait a second…?’. And at work, it’s even worse. At my old job I had a freakishly heavy workload. I took this job because it didn’t have one. But I've discovered I don’t know how to work slow, to pace myself, so I always finish things way ahead of schedule, and then I have to sit and wait for other people to feed me more stuff. And wait…and wait…

And I hate to wait. Patience is a virtue I raced past at breakneck speed without even a second glance. My psychic says that it’s a good thing I’m a Capricorn because with Scorpio as my rising sign, and Aries (the action sign) as my Moon sign, it’s about the only thing keeping me sane. And I think she uses ‘sane’ as a relative term here because I’m certain I saw a hint of eye-rolling when she delivered that news. But I don't question her. Her track record of predictions is too bang on, so I take her word for it when she tells me this.

Anyway, despite all that speed, I have relaxation down to an art form. I can nap like nobody’s business. Some people take half hour cat naps. I curl up on the couch and go unconscious for three hours. I can plop myself down on a Saturday morning and sit there drinking coffee til noon before I decide to budge. And every now and then I amble. That’s right. I slow the speedwalk down to a nice amiable saunter. Fine, maybe I’m window shopping and that’s why (hard to pick out the clothes you want when you pass them in a blur), but still, I manage it.

So, where is this rambling observation going you ask? Absolutely nowhere. I just happened to have finished my stupid report way before the other people had their parts ready, and now I’m trying to occupy my time while I wait for everyone else, which I hate to do. Maybe if they’d just let me nap while I wait…