And the train went merrily along the track, until it got derailed by a flat tire.

Illustration from pixabay.com

I've done my morning routine for a whole week. Today I was on track for a record time with few distractions, and then the phone rang. I could not just ignore the phone, because my husband took the car to the shop to get a tire repaired, so I had to talk to him. 

It turned out that the tire shop was very busy. The first real snowstorm here apparently brought out all those people who suddenly realized they needed new tires, or snow tires mounted. Or, like me, flat tires because they ran over something they could not see?  The man at the shop told my husband that it would be 1:00 at the earliest before he could even look at my tire.  This was around 10:30 a.m., so naturally my husband didn't want to wait that long.  I paused in my journal writing, jumped in his car and went to pick him up. It was only about a 20 minute drive, round-trip, so I wasn't entirely derailed. It's just that an interruption like that can lead to other distractions, causing me to put off or not do the rest of my routine.

We got home, and I went right back to my journal and then personal study.  I won't be done by noon, but close to it.  A three-hour morning routine seems a bit long, doesn't it?  I'll blog another day about what I do during those three hours.

If I'd had such an interruption a week ago, I don't know if I would have gotten back on track.  I can already see the power of determination in habit forming, and plan to continue to implement my morning routine.  It feels so good, and now I have the afternoon ahead of me to do other things.