What does Spontaneous Mean?

What are you more comfortable with — routine and planning, or laissez-faire spontaneity?

Ha! It’s funny that this topic should come up because I was going to write a post about time today.

I don’t usually write about work just because when I leave work, I leave work at the office and the twain shall never meet outside of the hallowed office walls and halls.  I don’t friend people I work with on Facebook.  I don’t follow their Twitter feed.  I don’t go to birthday parties or happy hour — unless it’s company sponsored and even then I gag at the thought.  Don’t get me wrong, for the most part I really enjoy the folks I work with and my job.  It’s just after eight, nine, ten hours of day with you, I’d rather spend my winding down time without you.

So, back to the prompt at hand.  I just got a new supervisor and he told me yesterday that he needed a lot of documents printed for a presentation today.  Six emails, he sent me and in each email no less than 10 documents.  Can we say, I was LIVID and I’m not even sure livid accurately describes how I felt.  It took me all frackin’ day print them out and put them in binders.  Literally all day.  I started around 9:30 and finished at 4:50, 10 minutes before it was time for me to go home.

The following is a little a quick discussion we had:

“How long have you known you needed these copies done for tomorrow?”

“A couple of weeks.”

“A couple of weeks?”

“Yes.”

“Well, can I make a request of you?”

Yes.”

“When you know you have a large copy job can you please give me advance notice.  So, I can work on it a little at time?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.  Remember we agreed to work smart.”

“Yes.  I’m sorry.”

“No worries.  The docs are in the binders and they’re in the conference room.”

“Thanks.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Bye.”

We had the conversation about working smart when we started working together.  He advised his time is important to him and I told him so is mine.  I like to plan my workday and I tend to do it right down to a tenth of a second.  I do expect things to come up and when they do, I can look at my schedule and say I’ve got time for that.

Actually, I just lied on the second half of that statement.  I pretty much go ape shit.  I don’t do it externally, but internally it’s on.  It’s not that I think I won’t have the time to get it done it’s just that you have messed up my schedule.  I’ve been told not to be  so rigid, and I’ve tried.  My brain simply won’t process spontaneity.  I end up planning my spontaneity.  Even my laissez-faire days at home are planned.

Here’s a typical Saturday schedule for me.

8:30 am — Allergy shot.  I have plan 45 minutes as I have to wait 30 minutes after I get my shot.

9:30 am — Target

10:00  am — Starbucks

10:45 am — Whole Foods

Noon — heading home

12:30 pm — home

Now there have been a few times when my plan was thwarted by Beltway traffic or my mom called me and asked me to stop off somewhere and pick her up something.  Ape shit mode here I come.

No one knows where I get this from because everyone in my family is spontaneous, except for me.  And sometimes I get pretty jealous because I don’t have a little spontaneity in me.