Finish Line

In just a few days, I'll be off "work" until the new year. I say "work", because as everyone is already well aware, my current job stretches beyond the normal boundaries of career woes into the absurd. My term of the week for it happens to be slavery. Seriously- what else do you call a contract where you are expected to be available 24/7. B'H' for Shabbos is all I can say.

Yesterday we had a meeting called for 9:30 AM. Being perennially an optimist, which by-the-by is not all it's cracked up to be, I thought that we would receive our latest assignments within a couple of hours after the meeting. But no. Turns out that despite having sent us all emails indicating how many hours we were allotted this week, they hadn't gotten their act in order enough to actually provide us our assignments before the evening. Beautiful.

So I decided the heck with it. I called up my friend and we were all set to run a few errands together and otherwise have a nice, relaxing afternoon. As I was literally walking out the door at 1:15 the phone rang. I deliberated whether to check the caller ID, because I had been playing telephone tag with one individual for 5 days already. That was the deciding factor and I sprinted to the phone. It was work. Naturally. Oh, could I do yet another rush job by 6 PM?

For the first time at this job, I laid down the law, and said that I had already made appointments for the afternoon, since we had been informed that there would be no work until early evening. After a brief discussion (my friend buzzed me from downstairs), I ended up cutting the afternoon out short and went home to do the assignment. A compromise, if you will. Hey, you gotta eat...

Despite my having already booked up my entire time off, I am very much looking forward to the upcoming break from my current mayhem. Hopefully come the new year and next phase of the contract, I'll be able to lay down some boundaries in such a way that I can have a life while still getting in enough hours. I can dream people. Stop laughing! :=)