It has been a very bizarre week for me. It’s over now, so YAY! \o/
Work has been quite rough, as opposed to just really busy as it has been for the past 3 months or so. Without going into detail (and I’m not really bitching here, just telling it matter-of-factly) I am completely covered up at work. Lots of conversations with the boss and others about how to make it better, bringing in more help, etc so we’ll see where that goes. I’ve been putting in 50 – 60 hours per week for many, many weeks now and it just seems to keep escalating.
Part of the “problem” I have to say is that I seem to be good at what I do. One of the reasons I left State Farm was because I kept being handed more work because I did it, I did it well, I didn’t complain about it, and so there were good results all around. Except I never was compensated for the fact that I did a lot more and better work than my colleagues. Now I’m at a smaller place and one could say that the reason I’m busy is because I’m needed. Well, I definitely have that aspect of Maslow’s Hierarchy met.
Monday night I didn’t sleep at all. Tuesday night, I got about 2 hours intermittently. I decided at that point I had insomnia to some degree. I also didn’t sleep on Wednesday night. I went three days with essentially no sleep.
Thursday morning I had to get up at 4:30 to catch an early flight. I couldn’t go to sleep after I got in the bed at 1:30 am – I was just thinking about all the things I still had to do at work and couldn’t get done until Monday because of this trip. It was really an overwhelming feeling and I guess the reason I couldn’t sleep the other nights is the same reason – it was just so vivid on Wed night. So after about 20 minutes of lying there I realized I was only going to get more frustrated about 1) my inability to sleep and 2) the inability to get things done. I decided to get up and pack and go ahead into the office for a while before heading to the airport. So at 2 am Thursday morning, I took a shower and packed and headed for the office.
When I arrived at the office at about 3 am, I found this going on outside my office door. Needless to say, I didn’t get much done. I called the emergency number for the building and the maintenance guy showed up about an hour later. We’re on the 8th floor and I didn’t feel like hanging out up there with the waterfall, in case things started shorting out. I sat in the lobby, fired up my laptop and started working on a report. When the guy showed up, I led him to the waterfall and he went to work – it was the water heater on the floor above that failed. Imagine what it would have been like if no one showed up untili about 7 or 8 am as is usual. Aren’t they lucky that I was battling insomnia? 🙂
I kept working until 5:30 and then headed to the airport.
Current Music: “Back to the Island” – Jimmy Buffett
Current Mood: Relieved and a bit chirpy