Who Moved My Cheese?

Today was one of those days where inefficiencies abounded.

It all started before 4:15 AM. Last night, we had snow and then single digit temperatures. Katherine is scared to death of driving in bad conditions, but needed to be at the clinic by 6:30 AM. She also promised a ride to a friend who lived in Southwest Omaha.

Meanwhile, one of my goals was to do the master's morning swim workout at 6:30 AM. Ah, good old conflict.

The compromise was to get up at 4:15! AM and drive Katherine and her friend 3/4 of the way to their clinic. Along the way, I would get out downtown while they continued with the car the rest of the way. I would then catch the #2 bus back toward midtown for master's swimming at UNO, arriving shortly before 6:30 AM.

Amazingly, it worked just as planned and I arrived at practice with a few minutes to spare. Afterwards, I took the #2 bus again back downtown to work.

Although the plan worked, it wasn't without a lot of effort.

A good example was in the rush to catch the bus after practice. Because my ears were about to fall off from frost bite, I rummaged through the pack for my tuke. That's when I discovered that it was missing because I had failed to close all of my bag's pockets before running to the stop. Curses! I looked up and saw the #2 approaching and decided that the opportunity cost of missing 20 minutes of work was less than the love I have for that tuke. I waved the bus along and back-tracked to find my hat. Fortunately, I found it.

But my work day was more of the same. It was just a lot of little stuff that just kept getting in front of progress.

In the end, I have to look back at the day and wonder was the cost of putting forth so much effort really worth it? I mean, I felt like a little rat running around a maze while mundane obstacles were placed in my path. A lot of this I brought on myself, but still, what was once easy to achieve was now seemingly unnecessarily difficult and required much wasteful energy, not unlike this blog entry...

I suppose it could be argued that a rat may have thought of a better use of time. Perhaps laying low and writing off the morning's swim would have been better. It's ironic, but sometimes it's more efficient being a slacker.

Indeed, a wise person once said, "While the early bird may get the worm, the second mouse always gets the cheese."