Leave work on time

that has been “fixed” for me as a result of my fall in March and resulting injuries and lifestyle change.

Since my accident I have not been staying late. It’s too much effort just to get through life. I had to take time off as I healed, and when I returned I kept to a normal schedule. For a while, just 8 hours a day seemed more than I could reasonably handle.

Now I am relying on a special paratransit bus (called the Access bus) for my transportation. You schedule rides 1-3 days beforehand and there is no varying from those times once they are set. Your wait window is up to 30 minutes, and many times it is late. Sometimes my commute can take up to 3 or more hours getting home. There is no way I would or could stay later than 5 now.

Once I am able to walk and drive again, I suppose it is possible that I would be tempted to stay late again. But that would only be true if I hadn’t undergone a complete change of mindset on this issue. I have no desire to go back to working late.

If this changes, I can re-add this goal. But for now I am calling it done.

I’ve managed to meet the goal of leaving before the parking garage rates go up 4 times out of 7. It is far from the progress I had hoped for, but it is progress. I will keep going.

Well it’s a new year, and a great time to make changes. This has been a stubborn habit to break (staying late), but I am optimistic I can make it happen. I had been staying very late into the night and that was affecting any attempts to solve my sleep problem.

I have to do this in baby steps, so I’ve set myself an initial goal to leave before my rates go up in the parking garage. This will not only get me home at a little more reasonable hour but also save me a ton of money (about $19/day) which I didn’t have to spend anyway. I started a few days ago and so far it’s working. I’ll have to pay attention every day though because it’s easy to just let the time slip by.

needs some serious attention. I have a few days off coming up (we’re going on a short trip) so maybe I can reset how my mind deals with this when I return.

I see I’ve only done this once this week. This one is so hard for me. I need to switch something in my brain to look at this in a whole new way.

This habit is critical for me to master because without it there will be no improving my sleep habit or losing weight or time for any of the other things I need to do in my life. I am especially displeased that this affects not just me but also my husband and his health.

Must do better next week.

I managed to do this three times in the last week. The progress is that one of those times I did it without having an activity to meet someone at a certain time. Will keep working on it.

for me. But I really need to make it happen. Fixing my sleep issues hinges on this. And the sleep problem is pretty bad.

I started tracking on this goal a week ago. So far I have only been successful two days since then. Both times it happened because I had other scheduled events to get to. Once I was taking my husband to the movies, the other was a grocery day.

Sure, it might seem like a good idea to schedule an event every night so I will leave on time, but that won’t solve the overall problem. I need to be getting things done at home and getting to sleep earlier. Neither of those things will happen if we go out to have fun every night.

I’m going to make a list in my tracking notebook of all the benefits of leaving earlier and find some way to read the list on a regular basis. I’m hoping that will help.