Overflow

This week was one of constant flow. Not a give and take, there was no ebb present, it was a week of putting my head down and producing. With a heard deadline looming on Sunday, I had no choice but to put the additional hours in at night. Even though I was only at lodge one night this past week, I did not manage to get home before 8 each day of the week. Even tonight.

Just because I was out of the office didn’t mean that the work would stop. In addition to the late nights there were late nights of work which usually left me with about 5 hours of sleep per night. While even during the busy weeks I would have time to crash and recover over the weekend. This was a uniquely overloaded work week that is easily carrying over to the weekend. These tedious tasks will be in addition to the day long travel and training at the annual Secretary Seminar in Elizabethtown (about an hour and a half to two hours away).

You will be reading more about both the Secretary Seminar and the work deadline in future posts. Now, understand, both of these things I have been looking forward to but I would have liked them spread out a little more than they are. The problem is simple in that all the events on my schedule seem to be lumped together. This was not my choice it was just something that seems to be happening as the gravitational pull from these large calendar blocks refuse to fight one another.

These kinds of weeks are not good for me, or for those around me. Not only am I constantly going but I tend to get some serious tunnel vision and anything that breaks that focus is met with some level and form of unpleasantness. I guess you could say that this is where the real similarities present themselves to addition and why they call people workaholics. You get the same type of attitude and reaction when you try and take a drink away from an alcoholic as you do when you break the focus of a workaholic in the middle of a project deadline.

The only thing that has interrupted me from work this week have been meals and other work. For instance, while this blog is written for fun, this week I had to treat it as a job in order to get things done. Sometimes that is the solution to these situations, you have to view things through the work lense, even things that have nothing to do with work like fun projects, meals, relaxation, and sleep have to be treated as necessary to getting the job done. It may not be pleasant, it may not be healthy, but it is something that has to be done on occasion in order to maintain functionality.

It can’t be done all the time but for short stints, like the one that I am currently in the middle of, it works. I may not have been the most pleasant or patient person but it has gotten me to this point which, granted, is still a little behind where I should be but I am much further along than if I treated this week like any of the other 51. However, I am going to have to make up for this in the coming weeks in order to restore some balance. We will see to what extent that actually happens but, for now, back to work.

Working Toward Relaxation

Today was one of those days. The kind of day that no matter how much you get done and how much progress you feel you are making it never seems to feel like enough to get ahead. Not the first time I have experienced this and certainly not the last but it is frustrating regardless of when it happens especially when you know that the days that are going to follow will, more than likely, hold the same fate.

Making things worse is the weather both in regard to temperature and just feeling under the weather lately. For me, it just makes me push harder to get more done and keep working no matter how I am feeling. Sometimes you just have to grind it out… there is no room for the luxury of a day off no matter how horrible you feel or how piercing the headache.

Honestly, I wouldn’t know what to do if I were to take the day off. So far the one half day that I have taken off and the one day that I have requested are because of events that I want to attend. Even when taking a day off I seem to be busy. Being busy may be taxing at times and some people may think I am a little nuts (I won’t argue with them on that point) but it keeps me moving forward and looking forward to new experiences and opportunities in life. This is how I am able and why I chose to work 200+ hours a month and keep a full schedule of activities going outside of the office.

It just goes to show that you don’t have to have good hand eye coordination to be able to juggle. Sometimes the actions of keeping things going, keeping everything up in the air, is what ensures that we keep putting one foot in front of the other no matter how tired we get or run down we may feel. This is also why this blog just keeps going (sometimes, I’m sure, it even seems never ending), this is another task which I can focus my mind on and use the opportunity to fill in the gaps of my day.

This is one aspect of my means of relaxation. I work on this blog to recover from work. I utilize this space to just let myself think sometimes about one specific subject while other times I let myself jump around a bit. While I am sure it is getting a bit repetitive at this point it is still a fulfilling way for me to relax and write about what I want to discuss rather than about a topic that is dictated to me from someone else. I know that if I do nothing I begin feeling stressed and begin wearing down quickly which is why I have to keep myself going. These post along with everything else I do and every place I go outside of the office is how I relax.