Stepping Outside My Comfort Zone!

I love routine and order, in my work life.  Anything outside of my normal day to day activity makes me slightly nervous.  Imagine my horror when my teenage daughter announced in May, she had been invited to visit Liverpool and due to the nature of the visit it was midweek. 

Usually, I would have said fine and taken the time off - but knowing that we were going away to visit relatives for 3 weeks, I was unsure how my clients would react to another couple of days off.  Yes, I hear you shout I am a freelancer and can do what I want.  However, when one of my clients sounded surprised about my extended break I decided another couple of days off so soon wasn’t a great idea.

Being the organised person, who always works at her desk, surrounded by everything you can ever need and having moved away from a laptop last year, I knew this might be a challenge.  Out came the laptop – which recently needed a factory reset, the dongle, notebook, pens, cables and everything else you might ever need.  That all worked perfectly at home.  Then came the packing my daughter’s comment 'we’re only going for one night do you really need all this?' Yes, of course, (I like to cover all eventualities - even if we are only going out for a few hours I am known for packing everything except the kitchen sink) - I love a large handbag!

I negotiated that on arrival I would need an hour to catch up before we went exploring.  We arrived at our hotel, the dongle wouldn’t work, panic set in – it worked at home.  Our room wasn’t ready – great!  Finally, we got access to our room, the dongle worked, I calmed down checked everything I needed to do, did it and we headed out for a few hours.  After exploring etc. we went back to our hotel and I did some more work.  By this time, I had calmed down and was enjoying the change of scenery.

The following morning, I dropped my daughter off and went back to the hotel to get another couple of hours work done.  By the time I picked her up at lunch time and headed back to Lime Street, I realised I had done something so different to normal and loved not only our break but working elsewhere.  Admittedly it was quieter than usual  work-wise, as it was the end of August. I did work most of the way home on my phone, but the pleasure of seeing my daughter achieve her dream was worth every minute of stepping outside my comfort zone.

That feeling of actually doing something different was amazing.  Yes, we will be going back to Liverpool but next time I am taking the time off and intending to spend more time relaxing, but just pushing those boundaries has made me realise I can.
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I challenge you the next time you immediately think no – try it – you never know what the result might be!  You might just enjoy it! 
 
​Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash