Well, ladies
I said yes to a panel on Thursday. I do not care about the panel. I do not know why I said yes.
That is not true. I know exactly why. Someone senior asked in a room with other people and I said yes because saying no in front of an audience feels like a different word than saying no in an email. I was performing agreement. I could feel it happening and I did it anyway. ✅
I now have a ninety-minute block on Thursday that I gave away for free. I am already resentful and it has not happened yet.
This is the flaw. I say yes to things that cost me time, and then I spend more time resenting them than the thing itself would have taken. The resentment is the tax. The yes was the purchase. I bought something I did not want and now I am mad at the store.
I am not writing about the panel. I am writing about what I did after.
I went back to my desk and I had eleven minutes before the next call. Old pattern: sit down, open email, answer three things, dial in. Productive. Tight.
New pattern, as of three weeks ago: I walk.
Not outside. Not a lap around the building. Down the hall to the stairwell, down one flight, back up, back to my desk. Nine minutes. I timed it once and now I do not time it because the point is not the time.
The point is that my legs were furious on Tuesday and I did not know until I stood up. 💪
Sitting for three hours does something specific. Your hip flexors shorten. Your glutes stop firing. The big muscles in your legs basically go to sleep with their eyes open. You stand up and for the first few steps everything feels thick, heavy, reluctant.
Nine minutes of walking undoes that. Not fixes it. Undoes the immediate version. Wakes the legs back up. Gets blood moving through the parts that went quiet.
Dani would say this is not enough. Dani would say I need a full mobility routine and a foam roller and probably a lecture about my hip flexors. She is probably right. But Dani also found her keys in the refrigerator this week, so I am taking her structural advice with some flexibility. 😤
Sonia would understand the nine minutes. She would call it something softer. A pause. A breath with legs. I do not need it to be soft. I need it to be nine minutes that exist between two calls where someone wants something from me.
I have a nine-minute block on my calendar now. It says "walk." It repeats every day between my longest meetings. It is not negotiable. I protect it the way I protect client calls.
Three weeks in. My legs do not feel thick at 4pm anymore. My back does not lock when I stand. That is worth nine minutes.
Block the time. Walk somewhere. Walk nowhere. Just stand up and move before the next thing that wants you sitting.
