Cheryl Patella.
Courtesy of Cheryl Patella
At 6 a.m. every morning, I gather fresh eggs, check the vegetable garden, breathe in the cool North Florida air, watch my dogs race across five acres, and walk into my home office to begin a virtual meeting with a client.Five years ago, my mornings began very differently.Before sunrise, I had already left my home in Miami and was in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Interstate 95. My commute to my job, which began as a fitness director and advanced to acting spa director and later as spa director at another facility, had stretched from 35 to 50 minutes, plus a 20-minute ferry ride.I paid about $65 a week in tolls, drove 20,000 to 22,000 miles each year, and accepted nearly two hours of commuting as simply part of building a successful career.I believed those sacrifices were the cost of doing businessOur culture often presents a choice between pursuing success and living a simpler life. What I didn't recognize was that I was also paying hidden quality-of-life costs in time, attention, stress, and mental energy, which diminished both the quantity and quality of my work. They never appeared on a budget, yet they quietly influenced how I lived, worked, and thought.Ironically, after more than four decades helping clients improve their physical and emotional well-being as a medical fitness specialist, I hadn't fully recognized how much my own environment was shaping mine.Then COVID-19 created something unexpectedFor the first time in decades, life became quiet enough for me to step back and evaluate the life I had built. I suddenly found myself with enough distance from my normal routine to ask questions I had been too busy to consider before.
