The thing I hate about getting closer to taking a vacation is how much the anxiety and panic in me cranks up. Not because I’m worried about traveling, but because I can’t ever feel like I can get on top of the mountain of things I am supposed to have done for work. And for every two things I manage to get done, six more seem to take their place. Kirk thinks it’s because people realize you’re going away and are hoping you can get their thing dealt with. I suppose there is some of that, but everything just seems crazier than usual.
There are ridiculous timelines for things “Respond and enter data into this spreadsheet and provide this information by end of day of you won’t be able to do the really important thing you or your staff need to do“. What if I was away? What or who would get screwed over because I didn’t respond? It’s a great tactic to use to ensure people never leave their devices alone…sow fear and anxiety everywhere.
There aren’t enough hours in the day, so even though I’ve booked every Friday for the rest of the summer off, I’ve already worked on most of them. Tonight I worked until late to try to catch up and I still don’t know how I’m going to get done what I need to get done by the end of the day Thursday.
Others are expecting things from me, and I am struggling to deliver, and it feels like crap. Like I’m doing everything equally shittily….
There are many days that I just feel overwhelmed enough that I want to go hide in a cave. I felt like that walking home today. Morning was punctuated with several short one-one calls/meetings, I worked through lunch to try to get some things done, and failed miserably, and then I’d had back to back meetings from 1-4:30 without even a five minute break. I nibbled on my salad during one of the afternoon calls where I was able to turn off my mic and camera for a bit. No time to get up and stretch, no time to prepare between meetings let alone for any one of them. No time to reflect on the last meeting before the topic was completely different and I needed to be engaged. In each meeting I was doing something related to the next or the last and so not as fully present as I should have been, and that feels like crap too.
And then, while walking home, I realized I was supposed to call someone back after seeking some information in the second of three meetings, but the third meeting went an hour over and so I not only forgot, but I missed the person I was supposed to call anyway, he’d gone home for the day….and the advice I was supposed to provide was going to be a lot of arm-wavy crap anyway…so he got it by Teams text, and he’s going to probably be disappointed because it’s not terribly helpful advice…..
Definitely not even worth a nickel.
And then I had to pick up the computer and put another few hours into something that absolutely has to get done before I leave….but I’m running out of hours in which to get things done…and I’m running out of steam.
I have a ridiculous amount of available vacation time, but every year I’m panicking about getting it down to the maximum amount I’m allowed to roll over into the next year. I have rolled 262.5 hours (35 days) worth of vacation time over every year for the past ten years. And that doesn’t include the overtime I accumulate, though I haven’t even been logging any of that since I took this new position. I just keep telling myself that I’ll take a day here or there, but I don’t, I never do.
And I still have so much to do to get ready for this trip. I was supposed to pick something up at MEC that is waiting for me. I have something at the tailors that I was supposed to pick up today too. I was supposed to call Telus and see if I could change something on my cell phone. I didn’t get any of that done and then everything closed for the day before I had a chance. Tomorrow will probably go the same way.
I don’t have time to run, I don’t have time to go for a hike during the day. My exercise routine is non-existent now. What a far cry from running three days a week and having a hike on the non-run days. Now I’m lucky to get a run once a week, I think it’s been a couple of weeks since I managed to run at all.
I have anxiety that if I try to take the time, I’ll fall even farther behind. Every day I wake up and tell myself I’ll go for a run or a hike at lunch. And every day at lunch I am trying just to find time to eat something while I desperately use the one hour in the day when typically no one emails, texts, or calls to get something, anything, caught up, before the next series of meetings that don’t even have five minutes between them.
Why do people just book right butt up against the previous meeting…of the next? To be fair, I don’t think many people even think about it, or look at other’s calendars. But how about ending meetings ten minutes before the hour? Every class in university always worked that way. I can’t tell you how much I hate interrupting someone speaking to say “I’m sorry, I have another meeting starting two minutes ago and people are waiting for me, I have to leave”.
And that’s what kind of a day it was. Not a very good one. Talk about a day riddled with self-doubt on every front. One cascades into the next and it snowballs.
At least I got a hug when I came home and started to crumble……that was definitely the best part of the day.
And at least I did get quite a lot done in the four hours I spent working before and after dinner. And I am infinitely grateful to have a husband who does 98% of the cooking.
I’ll take a deep breath and try again tomorrow, although tomorrow afternoon is taken up by something unexpected.
And then I can add all the anxiety I am feeling about this trip. Will I hold the others up? I’m not as strong a rider. I’m not as fast a rider. It’s been so long since I’ve done a multi-day ride. People say ‘ride your own ride’ when riding with others, but I can’t because I feel weak if I fall behind, so I’ll ride beyond what I feel is my limit to keep up.
I’m whining, just ignore me. Others have it worse.
