mja blog

  • First accounting units

    My first accounting units have arrived yay! I still have the OHS unit to finish off but I am finally into the ‘meat’ of my course.

    Last week I discovered one of the volunteers at work, Rebeca is doing this same course. She is a couple of units ahead so I’d really like to catch up to her. Then we can help each other out.

    Last week was pretty shoddy in terms of regular study time, I was just buggered when I got home every day. Will work on it this week, make sure I leave on time and get an hour of study in each day.

  • Catholic meditation

    Through the week there has been a missionary priest, Fr. Carlo visiting the parish. He delivered a sermon at the weekend mass and has been conducting an evening session each day this week as part of a retreat. It is a program of bible reflection, prayer and health, and advertised in the church bulletin as a “retreat on eucharist & the word of God for healing life’s hurts”.

    At the weekend mass Fr. Carlo had spoken about modern life and all the strains and stresses that go along with that, causing issues with health – depression and loss of mental energy. I thought what he had to say was very interesting so I went along to the Monday night session.

    There was a good turn out – maybe 40 or 50 people, mostly elderly or retirement age, I seemed to be the youngest one there. There was music, Fr. Conway was hovering in the background. I took my seat about halfway down the church, not far from where Dad and I normally sit.

    Fr. Carlo shared his reflections on various parts of the bible, the book of Ecclesiastics (Ecclesias?) in particular seemed interesting, kind of a philosophical bent – you can have all the riches on earth but without faith they mean nothing. He pulled out various tracts which talked about prayer as a quiet, meditative experience. He taught us meditative techniques – thoughts and deep breathing. Breathe in the spirit, breathe out anxiety, depression, fear, anger, jealousy. We spent about a third of the evening in meditation and came out more relaxed than I’ve felt in ages.

    I found this web page about Catholic meditation and it explains the rationale behind the meditative techniques from Fr. Carlo’s retreat http://rickmk.com/rmk/Cath/meditation.html.

  • Use technology in the workplace

    This assignment signed, sealed and delivered. One down, 17 more to go.

  • Idjut!

    Here I was getting slightly panicky about having to complete three assignments a month for my course; I hadn’t read the date correctly – Oct 2010, next year. Eighteen months to complete 18 assignments is a much better deal, but I don’t intend to return to my old ways and slacken off. I have nearly completed one assignment (possibly finish off tomorrow night). If the next unit is not too hard I might get the second one finished over the weekend. Then I can take a little break while I’m waiting for next units to arrive in mail.

    Phew!

  • Day one over

    Started out well today with a healthy attitude towards becoming better organised. About halfway through the day it started getting to me and I got a bit stressed, had a brief fallout with one of my co-workers. It kind of surprised me we were at loggerheads about something quite minor and she kept apologising for offending me when I wasn’t offended at all, was just feeling put upon because I had misinterpreted her line of questioning about our budget preparation. More annoying than anything actually, and I mentioned to her that I was feeling stressed and now I’m annoyed at myself for not keeping it together.

    I have a lot of respect for this co-worker and sadly she is leaving us. I think she is feeling some measure of stress herself because of this, it would be difficult but she is such a professional that she is determined it is business as usual up until the day she leaves. She is also one of the most highly organised planners I have ever met, her stress comes from a different source to mine.

    Some good things happened. I managed to complete a cash handling procedure guide for the reception workers to follow, so they hopefully know what they’re doing and minimise my supervision. I got the week’s cashflow report done (with chairperson practically standing over my shoulder!) I’ve made some progress on my assignment (1 of 18), I’m about a third of the way through and aiming to have this and a second assignment completed by next weekend. I think I’m on track for that.

    The biggest achievement for the day was leaving the office before 6pm. I was trying to leave by 5.30 at the latest but dithered around while locking things away. It was 5.45pm when I left, possibly the earliest time I have finished for weeks.

  • Crazy disorganised life

    Received a terrible email the other day. It concerned my slow progress with the bookkeeping course I enrolled in last October. Since then I have only handed in two assignments. There is six months to go and I need to complete another 18 assignments!

    It just goes to show how poor my planning skills are. I thought I had longer than 12 months and fewer than 18 assignments to go.

    I have been mulling over a piece of advice I was given yesterday – to prioritise “me” time. It didn’t really sink in at first because it seems like everything is “me” time in my life. The truth is that I seem to thrive on sacrificing “me” time. I spend so much time doing Hospice work, but it is not planned very well, so I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. And other areas of my life suffer the shortfall.

    I guess this is why I always feel so stressed and wrung out, and it seems like everything in my crazy, disorganised life is a mess.

    I want to turn this around but I need some tools to help me do this. One of the tools, I think, will be this blog. I shall record my efforts and progress. Don’t want to live like this anymore!

    So today is Day One of getting order into my life.