Have you ever had...

...one of those light bulb moments when suddenly that one thing that you've been thinking about suddenly comes into focus, and you understand it like never before?

I just had one.

I'm always late. Always. I typically have a really good excuse for it. Sometimes it's really not my fault. Most often it is. Sometimes I'm late by a few minutes, sometimes by much, much more.

There are a lot of factors that play into this -- my habitual messiness makes finding keys, sunglasses, and cell phones nearly impossible at times, traffic and construction impede travel but rest outside of my control, other delays of my own making push my arrival past timeliness.

I will say this, though (this is the light bulb): There is a certain part of being late that I enjoy. It prevents me from standing around awkwardly waiting for something to start. And it draws the attention to me when I walk in a room.

And yet, tardiness impedes efficiency, garners frustration in others, and prevents the formation of an effective working environment. It tells those waiting that I don't value their time, or even them as a person/friend/colleague. It leaves me tense and apologetic, others tense and aggravated. It shows lack of responsibility, lack of discipline, lack of dependability.

To make it worse, I'm often quick to become frustrated when others don't respect my time and arrive late to our meet-ups (Oh, look! There's a very large log in my eye!).

I've made a commitment to myself to change. Admittedly, I failed my first test: arriving at work on time this morning. I chose frugality and timeliness over buying/making my lunch (I brought leftover fish...which I got yesterday only because we were at a seafood restaurant with a seafood-only menu...blah), but I didn't account for the school traffic that I KNEW would be an issue.

BUT it's still a step in the right direction. And, as they keep saying at BPF (I'm pretty excited for the series we started yesterday), Direction, not intention, determines destination.