Day 333 – Frazzled?

5

333/365 (Nov 29, 2011) – A little bit. But not for any reason you’d think of. I woke up this morning from one of those dreams that is so vivid. In this dream I was teaching a class and when I arrived at the room I was missing a piece of equipment. Kirk ran home to get it for me. Then I dreamt that I didn’t have the VGA adapter for my computer but Kirk wasn’t there and I didn’t have my phone so I borrowed someone’s and called Kirk to bring it to me. Then when I stood in front of my dream class I realized I had forgotten to pick up some books for them. That would all make sense if any of it was for my job, but it’s not, it’s all volunteer. Last night I was frantically trying to get three newsletters prepped since I am out of town all next week, that’s all volunteer stuff too.

So I started thinking about what gets me stressed and strangely, it’s not work related, and rarely has been. The last time I felt stressed about things other than my volunteer work was over my PhD. So as I stood in the shower pondering this strange thing I realized that it wasn’t so strange after all.

First of all, I love my job. It’s not like any normal job. Every day is different. Sometimes I’m in the office, sometimes I’m in the field. Very little is set in stone, the job is interesting because a lot of it is about problem solving, investigating issues, educating people, learning about programs. I looked back at my calendar and realized that out of the last 11 weeks I’ve only actually been in the office once on a Friday. How can you not love a job like that?

So what stresses me? The non-work stuff.

Grad school was stressful for many reasons, but probably the biggest reason is that during grad school you are developing personally and professionally. The impact you make with your research, and your persona, within a field carry on, and your peers are judging you. Make a good impression and it follows you forever, regardless of whether or not you carry on in research. Make a bad impression, and the same is true.

But volunteering? How cant hat be stressful? When you volunteer for something your only compensation is appreciation, and that appreciation comes from delivering intangibles. Everyone wants to be appreciated, and in volunteer organizations that inevitably leads to taking on too many things. Volunteering is good! Don’t get me wrong, it’s very, very good. But it can also become overwhelming, particularly when you are juggling it with two jobs, one full time and the other sort of difficult to pin down with respect to time.

So, tonight, I bailed on the volunteering and headed to the pub to get a couple of hours of work (volunteer related) done so that I can do some other work tomorrow night (prepare for a volunteer class I am teaching the following night) and hopefully I can catch up a little bit on the University job on the ferry rides to and from the Island on Friday. Anything remaining will have to be dealt with on the weekend…and I still need to get Christmas cards sorted out!

So yes, a little frazzled, but it’s my own fault for saying yes too often.