random thoughts – Day 1,256 – (Friday) -- butt kicked

The week kind of kicked my butt.

Work spent a couple too many days in the nerve-wracking stretch of hurry up and wait limbo where things on my list are at some level of review and approval with other departments (some for over a month) and I’m the phase of waiting. Six or seven entries on my work list are labeled “OFA” (out for approval) and “F/U” for follow up, although saying “eff you” in my head also happens on occasion as I make the notations.

All the OFA and F/U stuff leaves me with not a lot of what feels like productive work and the challenge becomes trying to keep from going nuts during the lull because for as long as I have been working, I get panicky when my active work list is too short. Of course, I also know that when the logjam breaks, I’ll be buried alive all over again and it will be a different flavor of stress but it’s hard to remember I can only control what is within my jurisdiction.

A technology issue caused me to miss a meeting and another meeting had to be by phone instead of video. There was the coordination of a super short-notice rush project and getting the various parts sent out for approvals, tallying up the many projects already OFA, and swatting flies in the form of random questions.

Stress cake. Well, half of it.

One of the day’s random queries was from our warehousing vendor about a low inventory item which led to at least an hour of me tracking down orders for the past several years and running calculations and wondering why the usage was suddenly twice that of recent years while simultaneously trying to prepare a package of files for Compliance review, send another project out for a quote, and do the aggravating follow-ups and a couple other things. For such a super short active work list, it was an extra busy day, but mostly with stupid stuff. 

This was all interspersed with me stress eating two slices of leftover pizza and the last wedge of Wednesday’s birthday cake (in two phases because I'm not a total cave woman) and far too many chocolate candies before the whole vendor thing turned out to be a mistake at their end and I got the “oopsie” message, and a few other details were wrapped up. 

Suddenly, it was after 5:00, I was the last one left on the floor, and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Oy.