Tag: work

Late

Yesterday was my first day back to work after a week’s vacation. It was not the usual first day back as I walked right into some big process changes that needed to be handled and communicated to my staff. It was an odd day all around.

Today is more like the usual first day back. I left the house at 7:30am and got to the office 10 minutes late.

Yeah… welcome back, Robert.

I did manage to get my exercise in for the day and to take a stupid photo-a-day-challenge picture. Nothing special.

24/365

Here’s hoping the rest of the day/week/career is less frustrating.

Draining

What a day this one has been.

I was out on vacation last week and it was glorious. Today I went back to work for the first time and KA-BOOOM!!! A huge administrative change was announced just as I punched in for the day. I had 506 emails in my inbox and a meeting with my manager at 9:00am and a meeting with my director at 10:00am and DAMN did that come out of nowhere and just bowl me over.

It’s nothing bad. It’s going to make me very busy through October and November and into the beginning of December, but busy in a good way. I just didn’t see it coming and it has left me feeling drained and worn and sort of like a wrung out dish rag today.

I mean, woah!

So Close, Yet So Far

Today has been an okay work day for a last day before a vacation kind of day. I still have one hour and 42 minutes to go before said vacation, but I will get there.

I’m starting to sort of chomp at the bit though.

Today has been busy without being stressful. I have had a lot of things to do but none of them have been high pressure or high profile or anything like that. Just a bunch of administrative type things. The customers have been quiet so I have been able to focus on things that need to get done. I am thankful for that.

The Great Pink Floyd Reverse Order Playlist is now back to Animals from 1977. Great record with some absolutely outstanding guitar playing from David Gilmour.

Endless River – Complete
Division Bell – Complete
A Momentary Lapse of Reason – Complete
The Final Cut – Complete
The Wall – Complete
Animals – Currently playing track two, “Dogs”
Wish You Were Here – Up next
Dark Side of the Moon – On double deck but I probably won’t get to it today.

What else should I mention for the benefit of some future version of me looking back at Friday the 13th of September 2024 out of some sense of boredom or a this-day-in-history kinda thing?

The weather at the ocean for the next week looks excellent, according to the long range forecast I just checked. I think a sunrise photo session is a given. I hope to finish off a couple of rolls of film while I’m at it. I still have three rolls from Disney back in May that I have to get developed. I’d really like to spend a day in Boston if I can, but who knows if that will work out.

I am also going to my Dad’s place tomorrow morning to fill up a few boxes with books to donate to the public library in Tewksbury. They are having a donation drive tomorrow and they can have whatever they want from Dad’s book stash. If there is anything they won’t take (why?) I will bring them to Goodwill or something.

Those things, plus some music, plus spending a ton of time hanging out with the love of my life, plus helping the kids out with something next weekend… I think I have my staycation pretty much planned. 86 minutes to go until it starts.

Changing Up Tomorrow

My annual review was scheduled for tomorrow but circumstances conspired to allow us to move it to today. Nice. That also means I can take a sick day tomorrow and spend the day at the hospital with my father. Visiting hours don’t start until 10:00am so instead of driving to the office at 7:30 I don’t have to leave the house until 9:30. That means I can either sleep a little later tomorrow, or I can get up at the usual time and play some guitar.

Mental health wise, both options would be wonderful, but I think the guitar playing thing might be key.

On an unrelated note, my wife is brilliant. She is just amazing and everyone knows it and agrees.

Good News and Bad News

I feel like I’ve been doing this a lot recently. Sharing some information on the ol’ bloggie page without giving any details at all.

I am going to do it again… twice.

I had something on my schedule at work for tomorrow. It happened today instead and it went well. It was good news. It made me a little bit happy. It also took some pressure off of my schedule for tomorrow. Good stuff, indeed.

Then I got some really bad news. I am not sharing specifics, partly because I don’t have any specifics to share. Suffice to say things went down outside of work and outside of my home that are really scary and awful and oh shit I really hope they are not accurate. Bad news that has the potential to become terrible really bad news.

So… yeah… I am the very definition of mixed feelings right now. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going or what.

Happy Tuesday, ya’ll.

Stress

Why is it that missing a day of work makes things 100 times more stressful when you return the next day? I was out Friday and it seems like nothing really happened in my absence, but here we are today and I am stressing out over every tiny detail?

I thought this week would be a normal two-days-in-the-office week but now it’s three. I have three pieces of paperwork that I need to have done by (probably) Thursday. It should be super simple. In fact, there were four pieces of paperwork and I’ve already cranked out one of them. I’m freaking out over the remaining three though. Why? I have time off booked for Monday and Tuesday next week. I thought they were going to be music days, but now will the be spent with dad in the hospital? I don’t know. Maybe. Part of the time at least.

Seriously. Stop freaking out over nothing, Robert. You’ve got this shit covered. You can handle it. Stop stressing. Work is okay. Dad is going to be okay. Calm down and just get it done like you always do.

I think I might just be reacting to being sad that Bellana left for Vermont this morning. No clue when we’re going to see either kid again. I’m guessing that’s the real root of my struggles with this particular Monday.

Over all it’s not a bad day or anything, I am just stressin’ like ya do. May your Mondays be easier on the ol’ stomach, as it were.

Weird Week

I am having a weird week and I feel like I have to write it down in order to make sense of it.

It’s a full work week for me. Five days. I am going to be out for a couple of hours in the middle of the day tomorrow, but other than that we’re on the normal schedule.

Why then did yesterday (Tuesday) feel like Friday? All day long I was focusing on the imminent start of the weekend… when the weekend was still more than three days off. It did not make any sense. Now it’s Wednesday and somehow, unbelievably, it still feels like Friday? I just don’t get it.

Does this mean that tomorrow (Thursday) is going to feel like Friday too? Is every day going to feel like Friday until I actually get a Friday? Is every day going to feel like Friday until the end of time? How is that going to affect the weekend? Is Saturday (if it ever gets here) going to feel like Monday? Or Tuesday? Or Blurnsday?

What caused this epic scramble in my internal calendar? What caused my brain to go so far off the rails? Will I ever recover and get back to normal? The answers are, I don’t know, I don’t know, and probably not. Oh well.

I have about an hour and 40 minutes until my Wednesday (not Friday) work day ends. Once that happens I can start wondering if Thursday is going to feel like Friday too. I’ll let you know how that goes.

I Feel Bad About This

I feel like I dropped a ball at work. I did not, but I feel like I did.

One of the guys in my group was struggling with an issue on Friday. He was sending out chat messages to the rest of us during the morning and I was chipping in where I could. His problem involved a functionality that 10 years ago I was the authority on. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to look into it myself, but I am still often the guy who can straighten things out even though I don’t personally support customers anymore and therefore never have this sort of issue assigned to me directly.

He asked if anyone was available to jump on a video chat and look things over with him. Right about the same time my boss’ boss pulled a whole bunch of people, including me, into a different discussion and I had to shift my focus to that. By the start of the work day today (Monday) my issue was pretty much worked out but my coworker was still struggling. He was on another video call with a few people from other groups and they were trying to figure out what was going wrong. I joined the call and within a few minutes knew what the problem was and how to fix it.

Damn it.

By 10:00am today everything was fine and dandy and right as rain. That’s good. What I am upset with myself about is that if I could have just freed up a few minutes on Friday I could have saved my coworker a lot of stress and had it all wrapped up three days earlier. The customer would have been happy, my coworker would have been happy, and I would have felt like a (very minor) hero. Instead, I feel like let everyone down. Again, I did not, and the thing I was looking at on Friday is really important and has all sorts of upper management eyes on it, but I still wish I could have been there for my coworker sooner than I was. That’s all.

So Close

The weekend is so close. Less than 11 minutes until my shift is over.

I have to go to my dad’s to help him with something tomorrow. I also need to go grocery shopping tomorrow. Other than that? My schedule is open and clear.

If only I had booked vacation days on Monday and Tuesday… and Wednesday… and Thursday and Friday. Naw, a normal two day weekend will be enough (insert maniacal laughter here).

Less than nine minutes to go now. So close you can feel it. So very close.