Since I got promoted last year, I am very, very, very busy. Busier than I've ever been before at work. So busy in fact that I don't know how I stay afloat half the time. This is a typical day:
8:45-9:00: arrive at work (after wrangling a toddler in to daycare)
9-12: deal with emails that accumulated overnight/meetings/drop-bys
12-1: lunch outside the office (if no one has scheduled a meeting over it)
1-4: more emails/meetings
4-5: get some actual work done
8-10: more email management (2-3 times/week)
You know there's a problem when you find you have to make fake meetings with yourself just so you can have a block of time to get something important done. (OMG! I have a 2-hour block of time tomorrow--I'd better block it or someone will take it!). And when your director calls to see if time you've blocked out is vacation time or work travel--because if it's the latter, you're expected to be on that webex/conference call, motherfucker! Work travel does NOT excuse you from conference calls! No one cares that you're boarding a plane!
I liken this busyness to what I imagine standing chest-deep in the middle of a rapid river would feel like, foamy water just gushing over you, filling your mouth, your nose, making your eyes close. You can't move, can barely breathe; you just have to deal with the constant onslaught of water in your face. Day after day.
All I can think about is what it might be like to not be so busy. I remember the days when I had the time to surf the internet a little, read articles, etc--it seems like a distant memory now. I daydream too about what it might be like for me if my coworkers could own their own work and I didn't have to micromanage them, and if everyone didn't seem to come to me for every little thing and could help themselves and look something up once in a while. But that will never happen. The buck starts and stops with me now, the more helpful you are the more you're called on to help. Man does that suck for my stress levels.
I am not the kind of person who generally takes stress to bed with them. At least until this week I wasn't. This week I woke up at 4:30 am two nights in a row, thinking about work! I often will wake up before my alarm these days, and my brain will immediately start sorting through some problem at work. Sometimes, it's shit I didn't even know was bothering me. Often, it's productive, and I realize a solution that I might not have otherwise; but mostly it's bothersome and steals sleep from me AND I NEED MY SEVEN HOURS. I don't dream, I problem solve: the saddest bumper sticker ever.
I will admit that a part of me likes this busyness, it makes me feel integral to the organization, important, yadda yadda. I like making decisions, having knowledge, finding solutions to problems, helping people if I can. But I'm doing the work of at least two people (and not making as much as either one of them did), and in general the people I am dependent on to get my products done (but don't have direct management of) continue to underwhelm and disappoint. Occasionally when I step back and get a look at what I manage to accomplish despite the constant onslaught of shit, I'm amazed, and concerned for the future, because surely no one can be expected to maintain this insane pace against such odds for a sustained period of time? I see myself burning out in two years, tops.
Work to live or live to work? I used to resist the idea of work controlling my life, but I think I've not so much given in as given up on the idea of having a separate life from work. Who has time for a separate life when you can be expected to take a phone call even on vacation, or when the payback for taking a vacation is almost not worth the vacation? Who I am is what I do, what I do is who I am. The snake eats itself, the end.
