What Do You Do All Day?
(or "Stop Me Before I Volunteer Again")

Thursday, February 10, 2011

 

The Day After

Whenever I have a wall-to-wall day like yesterday, I always wake up the next day relieved that I'll now have time to catch up on things that have been languishing during the crunch. But the reality usually turns out to be that I'm so fried, I wind up taking most - if not all - of the day off. And if I don't do it consciously, my brain does it for me. Staring at the cursor blinking on my computer screen, without doing anything else for several hours despite better intentions, is usually a good clue that I'm officially in recovery mode and it's time to go soak in the hot tub.

On the other hand, those things that have been languishing have minds of their own...and often - like today - the phone calls and urgent e-mails start in first thing in the morning...and I'm off playing whack-a-mole again with my various responsibilities.

Moles Whacked

- Spent nearly an hour going through another tantrum with Alex about the tantrums he had last night while I was gone and the screen time he lost as a result
- Fielded three phone calls from a cranky stakeholder angry that a comment she made at our last neighborhood council meeting was left out of the minutes
- Fielded another call from an NC associate giving me a heads-up that our city council office might be calling me today
- Spent two hours going through e-mail before 10 am and didn't even get through most of the urgent things...including several reminders that I owe people information or action Right Now on several projects.
- Made reservation for a Monday luncheon I promised to attend

- Called another NC associate to let her know the cranky stakeholder wants to talk to her too...and then the associate went on for 20 minutes about all of *her* complaints.

- Cranky stakeholder called back to apologize for one of her complaints, which turned out to be completely without foundation.

- Sent thank-you e-mails to the candidates and moderator who were featured at our event last night

- Wrote minutes for a committee meeting at the neighborhood school this afternoon.

- Started working on a flyer for a new school book group I'm thinking about starting

- Hit a wall after lunch and had to take an hour break (even watched 20 minutes of TV)

- Attended a committee meeting at the neighborhood school

- Reviewed comps for several pages of the new NC website

- Caught up on a bit more e-mail

- Ran out of steam for good at 6 p.m. just as Alex got back from gymnastics

- Got called back at 9 p.m. by another mole popping up: an urgent e-mail saying something I was supposed to send out Right Now today didn't go out

- Found out why the mail bounced and got it re-sent...but then discovered another note from a city agency scolding me for not turning in a special request for the NC with the correct amount of advance notice (when indeed I had and the city folk just hadn't responded in time)

- Sent a long rant back to the city person, with copies to several others, about the way the request process in question has been screwed up for months now and no matter how early I send in the requests each month, or to whom I send them, they still get botched and I still get scolded (really, really not my idea of a good time)

- Exchanged a couple of notes with one of the people cc'd on that note (who also shouldn't be online answering work-related mail at 10 pm)

- Exchanged a couple of notes with another NC associate (ditto)

- Finally gave in to exhaustion at 11:00

posted by Elizabeth 9:39 AM

All material © 2002-2004 by Elizabeth Fuller. Please do not reproduce anything you find here without the author's permission.

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