Finished another few days of leave and returned to work today. Karen’s last day, she’ll be on maternity leave for 12 months. She liked the giggle toy I got for her farewell gift, sent me a text this afternoon to let me know it was giggling in the car as she drove home and made her smile. Alison and Ros organised a huge laundry basket for everyone to contribute gifts and it was overflowing. 🙂
Started the day intending to take it easy and not let the workload get to me, but it did. I probably lasted about four hours before I was feeling a bogged down and desperate. I actually phoned my volunteer helper Jan, to try and dissuade her from coming in the next day, so I could get up to date with the checking. I wasn’t very successful, Jan said she would come in at her usual early time, do a little bit and then leave me to it when I get to the office. Well who knows, maybe I’m wrong in thinking it would take far less time to do the work myself, than it does to follow someone else’s work. Jan makes mistakes which probably wouldn’t be that big a deal if I wasn’t such a pedant.
Phone call from Judith, one of the management committee. She knows someone with a financial background who might be able to help me as a volunteer. Oh dear, another one, was all I could think. Had to snap myself out of it, people are just trying to help. And I guess they are worried I’ll lose it altogether and there’ll be no one who knows how to do my job. I wish my job was that easy to handover. I really have to try and think objectively, less obsessively about doing it a certain way. It’s disturbing though how many real mistakes occur when the work is done by someone other than me. I’m talking about invoices sent out for the wrong amount, allocations to the wrong accounts, missing information, books not balancing. Maybe it is a responsibility issue, which kind of rules out volunteers as a real solution. Karen’s fill-in, another Karen, has payroll and finance experience so there is hope that there might be some more cover. It would be kind of neat to groom K2 for my job, she could take over from me when K1 returns in 12 months. Can I hang on that long?
Left work early today to attend an appointment with my psych. She’s got me back onto mindfulness exercises, I did some extra reading about it and learned about the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, which really impressed me. I’m determined to keep practicing this, I guess this is along the same lines as what Peter has been doing for many years.
A disappointment when I got there to find my therapist wasn’t in, and the office had tried to cancel earlier in the day. I’d heard the click click of a text on my mobile, but dismissed it because it is usually nonsense from Ludelle. Silly me. Doubly disappointing when I’d already cancelled a good payroll seminar.
Oh well. It was an early mark. Got back in the car, turned up AC/DC on the stereo and went home.