Putting The Pieces Together

Welcome back from the dark months!

Not long after I arrived at the lodge last night, the windows began rattling and the clouds opened up pounding the pavement just beyond the basement wall with a late summer thunder storm. As the rhythm of the weather played loudly in the background, I sat at my makeshift desk and planned out several overdue tasks. Before long I was joined at the lodge by other brothers trying to get that last bit of work done before the meeting.

In just a couple of days, we will be sitting in the sweltering lodge room resuming our usual meeting schedule after a couple of dark months. Still being new to Freemasonry, I keep trying to think of the different things that I will have to do during the course of the meeting. Tonight was the final preparation before diving back in to the usual program.

The last week or so I have been scrambling to finish up a number of summer tasks and placing overdue orders that will, hopefully, last until this time next year. Actually, since much of the material I am ordering is for new masons, I hope that I have to receive another shipment sooner rather than later. Either way, this crop of invoices should be arriving in the mailbox soon.

Of course, that was only a small group of things that needed to get done. There are other items on my list that kept getting pushed further and further back until late last month and this past holiday weekend. Thankfully, part of the time that I took off from work I was able to dedicate to checking off those items including sending the notice and getting the minutes done from our previous meetings month ago… I really have to get a better routine together for knocking those out as I can’t keep pulling them together last minute.

Even with all the work that had to get done and a hint of uncertainty for this quickly approaching meeting, I am looking forward to seeing all the brothers coming together once again for a meeting. While there is a certain amount of stress leading up to each evening at the lodge, I still find the time within those walls to be a tremendous respite from the everyday grind. Maybe with a better schedule, I will be able to enjoy those nights even more.

So, the dark months have once again come and gone. A whole new set of tasks awaits us in the coming months as we push forward in an attempt to meet the goals we set forth at the beginning of the year. Hopefully, the momentum from late spring was not lost and new petitions will be waiting for me on my desk. It really is an exciting time of year and one that I am looking forward to (even if the lodge room feels like an oven).

Back To Normal

In the past I have dreaded the beginning of a new work week for various reasons but they all came down to a simple explanation that it was not an enjoyable place to go. Having a drastically different schedule over the past two weeks I have been a bit thrown off and looking forward to this evening and the coming week. Everything should be back to normal with my usual five day work week and the long hours that I thrive on.

Having so much time off may be welcomed by some but, for me, it just throws my whole schedule off both in the office and at home. It is obvious that when you’re not in the office that not as much work is getting done, projects become prolonged, and while deadlines are still met it seems to be a bit more of a struggle to meet them. On top of that, when you enjoy being around the people with whom you work, that can be something that is greatly missed during these temperamental times on the calendar.  

However, at least for me, that is not the only thing that suffers. When I am used to working all day it is easier for me to continue working throughout the night on various projects and even taking care of and responding to emails. I guess I have a diesel work habit. When I have the day off or don’t have that transition from home to work, it is difficult to get the mind focused and the words flowing. Even on weekend, I struggle to find the motivation to get the things done that I want to get done (soon they will have gone so long that they will become a need rather than a want).

This may be the driving force behind my need to adopt various duties and responsibilities that need to be worked on every day. While I can put them off for a little while I still have to find some time every day to at least check and make sure things are going smoothly. Maybe my continued issues with this extra time (which quickly becomes lazy fat time) demonstrates a need for just a little more, one more project, one more club, one more group, one more weekly activity. I don’t know. There seems to be a need for something else. Preferably something that both my wife and I can do together.

I guess it is time to look back at my resolutions and really buckle down on a few things on my list. Maybe it’s not a matter of needing something else but a need to focus on what I have already planned on doing or starting. So, time to step away from the blog for the night and figure out where I need to commit more time in order to make some progress on my list of resolutions. At least I have a normal schedule again to balance things out.