Day 59

I couldn't bring myself to post on Friday, because I think I'm a bit in denial. It's hard to blog about yourself when you really think you're not doing a good job...and these last two weeks, I deifnitely feel I'm slipping at work.

I've gone through all the self-help stuff...ie, you were just on vacation last week, it's always hard coming off vacation. And, this week you were in all day meetings 2 out of your 3 days, that's always hard. And you are only 4 months into the role, you know it usually takes you about 6 months to get your feet firmly on the ground. Maybe those are true, maybe they aren't...but if I was being judged purely on my performance over the last 2 weeks, I don't think I'd cut it.

I'm simply not keeping up. And next week, 1.5 days of my 3 day week are all day meetings. The following week, it's the same. It's not about catching up, because I know I'll never catch up...but it's about having enough time to do even the basics...ie at least meet 1 hour a week with everyone on my team so they keep moving forward, filing my expense reports (had 2 business dinners to pay for last week!), even getting meetings SCHEDULED I can't seem to find time for. And even worse, I now end up with 2-3 meetings triple booked, and where in the past I could always make a priority call...now, those ARE the priority meetings...I've already shaved off all the non-priority ones, and generally, people have rescheduled them for me. So I get meeting recaps from all the meetings, all of which have very valuable information, and I don't even have time to read them.

I keep asking myself, why is this just coming to a head for me now? I was feeling overall pretty good up until a couple of weeks ago. I think it's because now I truly understand everything I SHOULD be doing to do the job right, and I'm realizing I don't have time for it. I also do think people are trying to put a lot of all day meetings in here just before Dec, where everything pretty much goes dead. Let me survive until Thanksgiving! :-)

I'm of course not crying uncle...a couple of bad weeks won't stop me. But I DO need to adjust, and I don't know what I'm going to adjust just yet. When I figure it out, I'll let you know.

NOW, having said all that...Zak and I had a great day on Friday. We played trains all morning. He was as happy as I was in the morning to be together. He starts every morning now with a question "Do we get to stay home today?" I love that he wants to :-) My friend Melanie joined us for lunch, and then Zak and I napped. I wasn't able to turn off completely, but I was exhausted from having had business dinners 3 nights last week, and so just tried to relish the down time with Zak. In the evening, Kuba, Zak and I sat all together on the couch and watched a couple weeks of "Oursourced" on Netflix (well, Zak had his Thomas running seperately, but still cuddled with Kuba and I). We had the fire going, and it was just a really nice way to end a hectic week where I was filled with self-doubt. At least my family loves me :-)