6:30 am: The alarm goes off announcing the beginning of a new day. I roll over and hit “dismiss” and try to gain a few more winks. But I’m winking in vain.
6:45 am: The legs swing off the bed and I wrap myself in a blanket and head to my prayer closet for an hour. Get The One perspective on the day before putting in any other perspectives.
7:30 am: The wife rolls over and wakes up. We talk for fifteen minutes about the day ahead, how much we love each other and then she jumps up to put the kid on the bus.
7:45 am: The shower is hot, the shaving razor’s cold and it stings. This is the time when the Android begins to shake, vibrate and blip at me with incoming messages. The world is waking up.
8:15 am: Go downstairs and start coffee. Have an apple while passing through the office to boot up the computer.
8:30 am: The coffee starts to make me vibrate as the email, texting, Tweeting, Facebooking, LinkedIn connecting and other nonsense starts in earnest on my end. I also begin my “to-do” list for the day.
9:45 am: Content creation, workshop preparation and research, speech writing begins. This will go in fits and starts, intermittently with checking email and responding to LinkedIn posts and comments, throughout the day.
11:45 am: Go to the radio and hit the POWER button. Start the talk radio going. It makes the day pass by and I get all these different perspectives from what I’m intermittently reading on Drudgereport.
1:45 pm: Lunch. And keep working on projects. Phone calls begin now. Always call in the afternoon because I hate to be bothered in the morning as a business owner and I project my neuroses on others. Monday and Wednesday, cold calling; Tuesday and Thursday, warm calling; Friday no calling.
3:45 pm: Kids start walking in the door. Whole day now enters “Swiss Cheese” mode, pockmarked by homework requests, TV requests, videogame requests, food/snack requests, wife requests, calls back from potential clients (if I’m lucky) or more work on content creation for the next day.
5:45 pm: Time to think about fixing dinner.
6:30 pm: Fix dinner because the two people under four feet tall are about to eat each other and the taller peoples above four feet tall are about to eat each other.
7:15 pm: Dinner hour. Welcome to the goat rodeo: The one time of the day where I’m a conflict consultant, mediator, father, disciplinarian, husband, Tweeter, and cook’s helper (or, depending on the day, the cook) all at the same time. And at the dinner table.
8:00 pm: Bedtime for those under four feet tall. Let the wrangling into showers, pull-ups, pajamas, beds and cribs begin.
9:15 pm: Go to the gym on Mondays, Wednesdays and maybe Fridays. Or, start to catch up on what was missed during the last two hours on social media, answer late emails, create content for tomorrow and talk to my wife as she sits next to me editing.
11:30 pm: Hit the sack. Set the alarm to do it all again tomorrow.
This is a summary of a day as a conflict consultant.
The days are also randomly broken up when there are meetings to go to, clients to meet, trainings, workshops or speaking engagements to run, deadlines to follow, or crises to address.
Backing up my wife and kids becomes the most important thing above everything and sometimes this leads to nights that stretch into 1am.
Also, if there is a class, outside employment or another factor to be addressed during the day (for instance, I have to go to work at a retail store as an employee for 4, 6, or 8 hours of the day) then everything shifts back or up.
No day is the “same.”
No day is “normal.”
No day is “average.”
Creativity flows when there is no routine, but no routine.
As the principal conflict consultant here at Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT) I believe in picking yourself as a conflict professional first before a client picks you.
That way you can decide the best client to fit into your routine. Not the other way around.
-Peace Be With You All-
Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining page on Facebook
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/
