catch-up or ketchup

I haven't written in TOO long. I'm too busy. It's not an excuse - it's the craptastic reality. And when I'm not busy, I'm exhausted!

The good news is that I am so busy, the drama that is my life has been pushed off to the side for now. The bad news is - that's denial. Not necessarily healthy.

What's going on with me?

Let's see. I am buried in a sea of projects at work. I'm the lead on a new system implementation. I'm mentoring a temp on a new feed implementatin. I'm a SME on a major system implementation that has pulled 2 of our other BAs away full time for the foreseeable future. I just found out today that I am likely the lead on another feed implementation. And apparently yet another implementation - on which I'd be at least a SME - is being pushed above the budget line for this year (or the business is trying). Oh yes, and I run production support for our team.

I love my job. I'm good at my job. My job and my career path are very fulfilling for me. I know that makes me a nerd or a dork or stupid - I have worked my ass off to be successful and SUPPOSEDLY the powers that be at my job have "big things in store for me". What those are, when they will come - I don't know. Waiting to find out sucks, but what I can do to accelerate it (with 1 exception - which is on my LONG to do list), I don't know. I am not patient - which makes it worse especially now that this carrot is dangling in front of my in this case myopic eyes.

In the mean time, as much as I love my job - when I look at the lists of crap I have to accomplish, I am frustrated and overwhelmed. I'm one person - ONE person. And I am not so naive to think I'm the only person who is overloaded and overworked. I'm not.

But I AM overwhelmed and overworked. And I have no idea how to unearth myself from that situation. The perfectionist in me hates being too overwhelmed. It causes me to lose focus (HELLO adult ADHD) and get confused and make ridiculous mistakes.

And I think beyond that - because my divisin of my company is small, and so many of us are in the same boat - we've turned into a bunch of petty, back-stabbing assholes. Every opportunity, so overworked fool is shoving others under the bus. The same person pushed me under the bus in front of the same department twice already this week - and the week is only 2 days old.

I realize that it's a recession. And as I watched someone get let go on Friday from my work, I was reminded again how blessed I am to HAVE a job and be obviously valued in said job. I am not one to ignore my fortune, and I have fortune on my side here.

But in these difficult financial times, I think the powers that be can be a bit unrealistic. Cutting a staff in half and increasing their work - the math doesn't add up. Yes, we've staffed up a bit. Thank goodness. But those people need to be TRAINED. If you simultaneously dump 3 times the work on us because we've staffed up by 15% - the math still fails. The new people are neglected. Don't lecture me about taking the time to train them. I'd love to. I'd love to dump the basic shit elsewhere so I can do the stuff that requires the level of expertise I have.

But if I have 7 meetings a day - when the hell do I train these new people?

UGH. SO FRUSTRATING.

Today wasn't a bad day. It wasn't a good day. It was a day. I support someone who I'd like to take a shake. I verbally shook her after the 2nd bus incident. She made me look like an ass because she fired off an email to an inappropriate audience without thinking first. So I called her on it.

Tomorrow is a new day. And I will look my fortune to do a job I love - which drives me nuts but I love anyway - and get paid nicely for it.

I will hope to avoid the high school bullshit drama and put my head down and squeeze out as much work as I can in the unallocated hours I have. I will hope that I will do the best job I can, the best job of anyone - that I will do things correctly and quickly and effectively and efficiently, and I'll fill in the small chip in my shoulder or quelch the "negativity" I supposedly project at times.

And I'll remember that my job, my career - that's only part of who I am. So I won't work until 6:30pm - because I've got a cool kid at home waiting to tell me about his new BFF (who knew 7 year old used that terminology) or how he has an online "appointment" on webkinz.com or to explain to me what he learned about Vietnam from the book he's reading.

Life is balance. I haven't achieved it. I probably never will. But here I sit, running in knots, trying to figure this shit out.

And if you understood one damn thing I said, you win a cookie. I sure as hell didn't.