Times When the Weather Changed My Mind
An exchange in the comments on a recent post mentioning weather got me thinking more about how long periods of cold, gloomy weather weigh on a person's spirits. That in turn got me thinking about when such gloom has influenced a major decision. In effect, When has the weather changed your mind about something? ...And I don't mean just, "Gosh, I'm going to stop being in this bad weather." I'm talking about a decision that's a lot larger than the weather itself, but where weather played an informative role or perhaps was a tipping point.
One example that comes to mind for me is when I changed my mind about work-life balance.
Set your wayback machine for this one to 2007, Feb/March-ish. I had been working in sales, enterprise software sales, for a few years at that point. I was helping my company grow and I was traveling all over the US to do it. I was helping develop new territories in the Midwest and Northeast. So lots of trips to Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Boston- places where winter is long and crummy.
Work travel was still somewhat new to me. I mean, it was and it wasn't. I'd been doing it for almost 3 years so I'd gotten really good at it. But I was new enough at it that I was still figuring out where to set limits. In those 3 years my travel had gone from 20% to 50% to north of 70%.
At the 50% level travel was already cutting into my weeknights activities such as socializing with friends. At 70% it was killing my weekends. Even if I wasn't traveling on the weekend- and I tried to avoid Saturday/Sunday travel for work, though it wasn't always possible- traveling that much had me so tired that a lot of the time I just wanted to stay home and relax on the weekend. That hurt my biggest leisure activity, the one I share with my spouse: hiking. She was already registering her concern about it. I was concerned about it myself, too. But I hadn't yet acted to change anything.
Then a moment of epiphany arrived.
I remember I was on a train platform in New York City. I'd come in on a subway train from JFK Airport to NY Penn Station. I then walked two long blocks from the 32nd & 8th side of Penn Station to the PATH train station at 33rd & 6th, where I'd take the PATH train to New Jersey and walk one block to a hotel. Flying to JFK and transiting through NYC made more sense than flying to EWR on that trip because of price and availability for a non-stop flight. Anyway, I was on the PATH train station. It was nighttime, maybe 10pm, and it was cold. Cold and windy. The cold wind swept right along the platforms.
"Why am I doing this?" I asked myself reflexively. It's my job, of course, was the answer. I amended the question. "Why am I here, working late nights in the cold, to pay a mortgage on a house where it was pleasant and 70° today?"
Understand this was not merely, "Wah! I don't like cold weather!" I get that we all make sacrifices for work. That's the reason it's called work. The epiphany here was not simply that the conditions were tough but that they were tougher than I was getting credit for. They were tough- on me- and nobody else at my company cared. I resolved two things that night. 1) I would speak more forcefully for myself, pushing back against overly tough travel demands. 2) I would seek to find ways to have my business travel not only not wreck my life but actually help it.
One example that comes to mind for me is when I changed my mind about work-life balance.
Set your wayback machine for this one to 2007, Feb/March-ish. I had been working in sales, enterprise software sales, for a few years at that point. I was helping my company grow and I was traveling all over the US to do it. I was helping develop new territories in the Midwest and Northeast. So lots of trips to Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Boston- places where winter is long and crummy.
Work travel was still somewhat new to me. I mean, it was and it wasn't. I'd been doing it for almost 3 years so I'd gotten really good at it. But I was new enough at it that I was still figuring out where to set limits. In those 3 years my travel had gone from 20% to 50% to north of 70%.
At the 50% level travel was already cutting into my weeknights activities such as socializing with friends. At 70% it was killing my weekends. Even if I wasn't traveling on the weekend- and I tried to avoid Saturday/Sunday travel for work, though it wasn't always possible- traveling that much had me so tired that a lot of the time I just wanted to stay home and relax on the weekend. That hurt my biggest leisure activity, the one I share with my spouse: hiking. She was already registering her concern about it. I was concerned about it myself, too. But I hadn't yet acted to change anything.
Then a moment of epiphany arrived.
I remember I was on a train platform in New York City. I'd come in on a subway train from JFK Airport to NY Penn Station. I then walked two long blocks from the 32nd & 8th side of Penn Station to the PATH train station at 33rd & 6th, where I'd take the PATH train to New Jersey and walk one block to a hotel. Flying to JFK and transiting through NYC made more sense than flying to EWR on that trip because of price and availability for a non-stop flight. Anyway, I was on the PATH train station. It was nighttime, maybe 10pm, and it was cold. Cold and windy. The cold wind swept right along the platforms.
"Why am I doing this?" I asked myself reflexively. It's my job, of course, was the answer. I amended the question. "Why am I here, working late nights in the cold, to pay a mortgage on a house where it was pleasant and 70° today?"
Understand this was not merely, "Wah! I don't like cold weather!" I get that we all make sacrifices for work. That's the reason it's called work. The epiphany here was not simply that the conditions were tough but that they were tougher than I was getting credit for. They were tough- on me- and nobody else at my company cared. I resolved two things that night. 1) I would speak more forcefully for myself, pushing back against overly tough travel demands. 2) I would seek to find ways to have my business travel not only not wreck my life but actually help it.