Yesterday, I did something spectacularly inefficient — and embarrassingly human.
I got up at 5:30 a.m. so I could finish chores before driving four hours to a vet appointment. I had rearranged my work schedule, used a full day of PTO, and convinced myself that this trip was the best use of my Wednesday.
Except it wasn’t.
The appointment isn’t until next week. The 29th.
And I had it written down correctly in my planner. I looked at it, more than once, but my brain kept insisting it was this Wednesday. I even double-checked before leaving — somehow still seeing what I believed instead of what was actually there.
So around 12:45 p.m., after nearly five hours on the road, I finally listened to the little voice in my head that had been quietly saying all morning, “Are you sure?” I called the clinic to confirm the time. And sure enough — I was a week too early.
I just sat there for a minute, staring at the steering wheel, feeling that awful rush of anger and embarrassment. The how did I do this? kind of anger. The I-should-have-known-better frustration that hits hardest when you’re already running on empty.
Then I turned the trailer around and drove home.
I made a few stops to rest — for me, the horse, the dog — because there was no point rushing. By the time I pulled into the driveway, it was 7 p.m. Eleven hours of time, eight hours of PTO, one tank of gas, and a whole lot of humility.
It’s not the end of the world, but it shook me a little. I don’t usually make mistakes like that. I’m organized. I plan. I check and double-check. So when my brain betrays me — when it skips a beat and decides a date is a week earlier than it is — it feels personal.
Now I get to do it all again next week. Same horse, same drive, same vet. The visit is important — we need answers — but there’s a quiet dread in knowing I’ll have to retrace the same road.
I’ve been trying to figure out what happened. Maybe it’s because October has five Wednesdays this year, and my brain latched onto “last Wednesday of the month.” Maybe it’s just exhaustion, the kind that fogs your sense of time. Maybe it’s what happens when you hold too many details in your head for too long.
Whatever it was, I missed the signs. I ignored my intuition — that small, consistent whisper that something was off. And that might be what frustrates me most.
Mistakes like this don’t happen in isolation. They show up when your capacity is low, when you’re stretched thin enough that your brain starts taking shortcuts. When you stop seeing dates and start seeing patterns. When you stop pausing long enough to confirm what you already “know.”
I wasted a day and a tank of gas, but what I really lost was a bit of trust in my own brain. Maybe that’s what this week is here to remind me: that even the most reliable among us are still human.
And sometimes, being human just means getting it wrong — and finding a little grace for the version of yourself who did.
Photo by CRZ . on Unsplash
