Thoughts on Change

"If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies." ~ Unknown

"If you want to make enemies, try to change something" ~ Woodrow Wilson

"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are." ~ Bertold Brecht

Ask anyone who truly knows me and they will likely tell you that I DO NOT LIKE CHANGE!! Big, or small I am generally not a fan of changes. This is something I recognize about myself, and am trying to get better at, and I must say that being a mother has given me LOTS of practice. Goodness knows there have been lots of changes in my life since finding out I was pregnant in July of 2008. While I think I handled the major life changes associated with pregnancy and having a new baby pretty well, I find myself more and more getting bogged down with the multitude of little changes that I experience in day to day life.

For example, when I got my RAZR phone years ago (recently replaced with a BlackBerry) I spent half a day or more trying to figure out how to make the time always display on my phone like it did on my older model. After spinning my wheels for much longer than was probably acceptable I finally came to the conclusion that it wasn't possible and somehow learned to live with having to press the side soft key to see the time display. In the big scheme of things NOT a big deal, but it seriously rocked my world for the first few days of having my new phone.

I was reminded on this story this week as my work computer was upgraded to a new version of Microsoft Office. A wanted (and needed change) with lots of benefits (or so I'm told), but, nonetheless this CHANGE has kicked my @$$!! Everything I have tried to do has taken at least 3X longer than it should which infuriates me. I like to be as efficient as possible at work (and in my personal life) and can't stand it when something that would normally take me 30 minutes turns into an 1.5 hr long project. And then there are the things that I have slowly found myself unable to do in the new version such as save a DBF file in Excel and update our common task list. Minor inconveniences in the big scheme of things, but MAJORLY aggravating when trying to do the things you are used to doing without any issue.

While I realize that change is often needed and necessary, I sure do wish it would be a little less painful, or that I would somehow adapt more quickly.

"The art of life is a constant readjustment to our surroundings." ~ K. Okakaura