Late Again... why?

I work some long hours at my job. Long enough that missing any time at all, while not of much concern to management since I work my "scheduled" hours without a problem, concerns me since I have expenses to meet and use all those hours to make sure I meet them. I usually get in at seven even though I'm scheduled for eight, but two days this week, I've been late by almost an hour each time. This is odd since I haven't come in at eight since probably February.

I've been trying to work out exactly what the deal is since I do enjoy my job, and usually, I start coming in late when I don't enjoy it. There have been some harder days over the last week, but nothing that has turned me off. We've been working hard on the house for an upcoming party, and I've been going to bed at 1am, but even that hasn't much affected me. I've laid off the caffeine and started drinking water, but even that doesn't cause much. Then it hit me.

I got myself onto a committee here at work. It was one of those things where I was approached about it, and then there was a selection process. I held the opinion that if I was meant to do it, I would be selected, and if not, then I wouldn't. I leave things like that in God's hands and try to pay attention to what goes on to decide what to do. I've failed to do that before, and it's bit me pretty hard.

But I made it. I made it, and the first thing the committe is doing is getting together all in one place. Well, the group is spread out across the country, so the place we're all meeting is the headquarters which is in Alpharetta, GA. So, I get to take my first business trip, but it's also away from the family for three days. I leave early, early Monday morning and return on Wednesday evening, and through our entire marriage, I can only think of two times the Queen and I have been apart for a couple nights.

So part of me doesn't want to go. I haven't been on a plane since 1995 when The Engineer graduated high school, and I returned from Colorado for a couple days, and I couldn't afford the time to drive. Now, I did enjoy flying during my military venture, but not having been in over thirteen years, I'm a little trepidatious over the whole thing. Add to that going to a strange town and depending on everyone else to get me around makes for one stressful situation for me.

It's probably a subconscious reaction to the situation that I'm going through. I'm I'm late, they won't like me anymore or something. But on the flip side; shall we say, the rational side? This committee thing will reflect well on me from a career perspective, as my current job is the first one I've ever had that shows some career potential that I might actually enjoy. My last job was ok, but I knew I'd hate moving up. In fact, it rang as kind of scary since they were always so strict, and let's face it, I'm not.

So in order to fix my lateness, I'm staying late, and I'm going to seriously try to come in early for the next two days. If I'm resolute about it in my head, I'll get up. Otherwise, I'll be here till 7:00 on Friday night, which would suck, so I've got to get this into my head.

I will wake up. I will wake up. I will wake up ... on time. ...on time. ...on time.