ch...ch...ch...changes

In case you've forgotten who I am, I'm the girl who loves routine, who doesn't get sick of the same meals day after day, who thrives on structure and patterns in her life...who doesn't particularly like change. It's not that I haven't had to deal with my fair share of it, but I don't always handle change gracefully. In fact, if there's too much of it at once or if it hits me when I'm feeling weak otherwise, change can threaten to unravel me. That being said, the fact that I'm still smiling at the end of June 1, 2009 is a pretty good deal!
Two major changes today: summer mode at work + beginning of Ironman taper. Quick translation: this means I'm doing less of two things that I devote a lot of time to. Yes, this is a happy thought in general because it means I have more time for other things, but it's a shift.
9-2 as my hours at work plus a very laid back/able to get a lot of stuff done because there aren't many interruptions is something I look forward to each year. I really do love summer hours and summer mode. But it's a change all the same!
And our Ironman taper will be a change, too. Again, a welcomed one. My body is ready for the rest. I'm excited about the extra time to catch up with friends, catch up on sleep, and prepare for race day (both literally and figuratively). But it's a major shift from putting in upwards of 15 or 16 hours a week for training and dropping it back to 10 hours. And that doesn't even touch on what our bodies go through during taper. I'm not really sure what taper holds in terms of all of that and since it's day #1 of taper I can't say I feel any difference yet! But I'm sure that somewhere along the way these next three weeks I'll notice how the change is affecting me. (And, lucky you, I'll probably blog about it!)
So, I guess this is another chance to practice handling change more gracefully. I need to keep practicing because it is NOT something I've even come close to managing very well in my life. (Yet another gift from Ironman!)