Here I am grovelling abjectly again for my non appearance. It's been an interesting couple of weeks to say the least. It hasn't all been bad - there's been some great things too and I mst say that by many people's standards the bad wasn't all that bad.
So what's been happening? Work reached an all time high of crazy busyness. Around about the time I last posted, work decided to roll out a major employee benefit (that's 1300 people) and yours truly got told about it approximately ten days before roll out. So for two weeks prior to the roll out date - which was fixed in concrete - I was making this happen - and I did - very successfully. But to do that meant working 60/70 hours a week for two weeks. Roll out day went perfectly but while the emphasis of all this was to get the benefit details to our employees there was an add on which allowed similar benefits to their partners and families for a reduced cost. I hadn't bargained on the fact that the employees would be delighted with their free benefit and immediately want to get their partner in on the deal too!!! So the craziness looked like continuing. Might add that the deal for employees is for free membership at any of the 3 local gyms, free golf at 3 local courses and free entry to the local movie theatre.
I had a discussion with my immediate boss late on the Monday (roll out day) and while she was sympathetic to a point her comment was that she wasn't asking me to work these hours!!!! (although she still expects deadlines to be met) So home I went. That night I tossed and turned and was awake at 2am wondering how I was ever going to get through my workload and stay sane. At 3.45am I got up and got on my trusty laptop and emptied my head out. And then my plan came together. I realised it was my life and my choices and that it was up to me to look after my mental and physical health and that I needed to do things differently. I won't bore you with the little detail but I came up with a strategy and some rules for me and also acknowledged that with the choices came some consequences - I'd have to learn to accept that not completing a task on time perfectly every time wasn't my failure rather a failure of the business resourcing or the planning of the person who gave it to me. I have always prided myself on delivering quality on time and of course with this ever increasing workload the only way to continue to do that was to work longer hours. Should add that I put all this down in an email to myself.
Anyway went to work on Tuesday actually quite angry but with some firm resolve. My manager - next step up from my boss came past and said good morning - I replied but not with my usual enthusiasm. He immediately came in, and asked how I was and said he knew I'd been working very long hours and how was I - at this point I was going to bawl - so I pulled the email I'd written to myself up on my screen and told him to read that. He was very sympathetic and also apologised very sincerely for not arranging for any resources to help me with the benefit project. At one point both of us were in tears!! We had a good discussion about work/life balance and he's supporting all the plans I've put in place. So I felt much better after that. Might just say that on Friday afternoon before I left he asked me how my week had been and if I was finding things a bit better.
So all this stress caused my eating habits to go AWOL and my weight was jumping about all over the place. However I got my act together on Monday of this week and I'm back on track and have managed to dispose of the stress gain and back to where I was. I have a goal which always helps. Bloss and I are off to Melbourne at the end of May for a couple of days. We can't manage to get away at Easter as I didn't line up the kennels for Zanna in time so this will be a lovely break plus I just love Melbourne. Clive is going to be in Melbourne at the same time so I'll get to see him (haven't seen him since last August) and we'll get to meet Jo his new girlfriend as well as just have a nice little break. I got a brilliant deal on flights with Tiger from Rockhampton to Melbourne ($225 return for us both including the credit card fee, extra 20kgs etc) and then I did the Wotif mystery hotel - I'd worked out in advance which one I thought it was and I was right - The Hilton on the Park and we get two nights for us both for $330. So really quite a cheap weekend - we leave on Thursday at 11am and into Melbourne around 2pm and leave Melbourne again on Saturday night at 5.30pm so should manage to do a bit of damage to the plastic in that space of time!!!
Now a few pics of the good times in the last couple of weeks:
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| The boys playing silly buggars |
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| A view of where I work from the ocean |
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| Last Sunday morning Deb rung up and said lets go boating so we did |
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| We went from our place up the harbour into the Marina and had lunch on the boat there - yummy sandwiches and pink champagne! |
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On the way back we went up the river a bit - the house you see is next door but one to us - but this is the river in front of our house
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| Last Monday Josh's Strings Group were playing at a concert in Library Square so I went along to watch - here he is just after the performance |
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| Then we all went for tea to the Library Square Brasserie and here's Curtis who as usual is pulling an interesting face. |
So as you can see from the pictures I have much to be thankful for and I just needed to get the old work/life balance properly aligned and I think I have now although it will take careful monitoring. So once again I've been a poor commenter but thank you everyone for your comments to my last post - you make me feel loved and wanted.
Hope all is well your world and here's to a wonderful week
Love Zxx
