prev next mail blog archive

Right now I'm

Bio Links People Recipes Storyteller

July 28, 2003 The First Day of the Rest of My Life I have survived the first four hours of my return to work relatively intact. As I feared, it was necessary to de-trash my cubicle before I could actually inhabit it this morning. My intrepid co-workers took part in the time honored tradition that I myself have enthusiastically taken part of, on the other end of things. They filled my cubicle with trash and old newspapers, and tacked colorful images depicting the hell I was returning to, to my walls. They covered the whole lot with a sheet of plastic tarp material which formed a roof. I felt simultaneously loved and annoyed, and spent the first 45 minutes of my return tearing everything down, picking everything up, cleaning, and dusting. There were inches of dust and grime over every surface. I just don't understand where it all comes from. I gag to think that it's the accumulated DNA sheddings of my nearby neighbors. Dust bunnies the actual size of real bunnies inhabited my office, waiting for me to thwack them down to size with a broom and a defensively aimed bottle of surface cleaner. I logged into the network with my dimly recalled passwords, and was shocked that I had no connectivity issues. I was surprised to only find 363 e-mail messages waiting for me - I've had more waiting for me between a Friday and a Monday, before. Then I realized that old messages were being automatically deleted from the bottom of the list, and had been doing so, unread, since my departure. And 93 of the messages waiting for me were of the SPAM variety. This left a manageable amount to deal with between meetings this morning. Three of them. Before noon. On my first day back. And three more after lunch. Things apparently went to hell in a handbasket shortly after I left, and I have a whole new environment to deal with. Pretty much everything that *could* have changed in the area I manage, did. New processes were implemented or are in the course of being implemented, which means I have a lot of catching up to do. Priorities and projects have shifted and changed - in one case, a project changed so much while I was gone that it came back around full circle and is, today, right in the same state it was in when I left it back in June. New people have come, old people have gone, and my entire network of contacts needs to be rediscovered. I'm finding myself able for it, though. I think. This sense of relaxation and a disinclination to stress over things is surely a short-lived thing. This morning when I woke up, I had a real sense of, "Today is the first day of the rest of my life." Getting up at 5:30 and working out. Showering and eating breakfast. Getting ready and making my lunch. Into the office at 7:30. Going through the normalcy of logging in/ meetings/ work/ meetings/ lunch/ meetings/ work/ logging out. Phone calls throughout the day with Calvin. Starting an entry while eating lunch at my desk. If it weren't for the photographic evidence and the tan that I'm sporting (that EVERYONE has exclaimed over), I'd swear I never left. Except that I have found a new novelty in the whole process of living and working, that I didn't have before. I actually had no problem getting out of bed this morning, and was gripe-free as I mounted the elliptical machine and worked out to the morning news. Strangely enough for coming in off of a two month vacation, I was in a good mood when I got to work this morning. I give that a week, tops, before it wears off. For now, I'm enjoying this surge of productive energy and optimism as the ephemeral thing that it is. The mountain of debt doesn't seem so steep, the payoff goal doesn't seem so insurmountable. The project load doesn't seem so vast, the responsibilities don't seem as heavy. The tedium doesn't seem quite as tedious at this moment in time as I know it will, a few weeks from now, when I'm saying, "Sabbatical? What Sabbatical?"

Original content belongs to ME.
Exceptions are noted.
Stealing really isn't recommended, or necessary.
©Laura Charon 2000 - 2003.