Striding Out of the Comfort Zone

What exactly is the Comfort Zone? Where does it begin, and where does it end? During my long working life I have rarely had to consider what I am happy doing and what would be too much of a change or challenge for me. We all sign up for a specific type of work, are told what it entails, and follow it, hopefully to the best of our abilities. Now and then someone might come along with something for us just outside of our normal routine, our normal experience, but is that exiting the Comfort Zone?

I cannot say that I have ever given it any thought. My work has been a mixture of challenging and downright boredom, some adventure and quite a bit of stress and strain. I have never, however, been stretch to such a point that I have been forced to ask myself whether I am comfortable doing a certain task, and that includes the many years I was involved in active military operations in war zones and inner security.

This week, however, I believe I have discovered where my Comfort Zone comes to an end. All of a sudden, albeit planned, there is no set routine in my life. I am not forced to arise at a certain hour, prepare myself for a day’s work and follow the train, walk, work, walk, train routine of most other days, certainly over the last eight years. I no longer have to plan shopping trips to satisfy both an emptying refrigerator and a tight available time zone. Laundry can be done at all times of the day, rather than late at night or on the weekends, and those same weekends are now unlimited in possibilities for leisure and entertainment, assuming adequate funds.

My Comfort Zone has always been an organised set of rules and timings, mostly based around what an employer expects, but often also how trains run, where a certain meeting is going to be held, or who holds the reins of power. I suspect that it is the same for many in our modern society: we are bound by the need to work, and the employer sets the boundaries of that work. And, as of Friday, that organised Comfort Zone, that set of rules and regulations, often unspoken but accepted, is no longer there. It’s not a case of striding out of the Comfort Zone, more being pushed through age and circumstance into an unordered and new life with few constraints. I do not have to check my appointments calendar, I know that I have the time. I do not need to see when there is a free hour, they are all unassigned.

I am the Master of my own Time, and this very fact is a step outside the Comfort Zone for most, if not all, today. It is also a step that I can avoid by signing up for some time-consuming activity – further or advanced education, helping the needy as a volunteer, taking on a part-time or mini-job – and push myself back down into the subservient level of one commanded by others, controlled and restricted. Or I can check my small change, don a sun hat, and wander out into the world, a person of leisure reading my newspaper at a street café without a care in the world, and creating a new, unique Comfort Zone.