Yesterday was an exceptionally packed day: discussions scheduled back-to-back (with almost no breathing space in between), visitors to meet up with, and a load of emerging issues that had to be dealt with pronto!
I am thankful for having a job that a number of people have told me they wish they could have, and which allows me to work with a lot of wonderful people. But as with everything else in life, one has to take the bitter with the sweet.
I'm a bit of a stickler in trying to keep to a timetable, and for work I prefer to know schedules of meetings, conferences, reports and whatnot a week in advance. Yes, I know that only happens in an ideal world (sigh). I'm OC that way, what can I say?
In addition to the tidy agenda we think we will be working on, we are actually bombarded with added aggravations:
- Ambush chats. "This will only take five minutes. What do you think about..." Yeah, yeah, I think your watch needs a bit of winding if you think we only need to spend five minutes on this!
- Urgent issues. "We need to resolve this now...", by which "we" is actually a euphemism for "you". And so the little pockets of breathing space you've painstakingly worked into your schedule goes up in a puff of sulfurous smoke!
- Inefficient and Interminable meetings. Just how long is a discussion supposed to last? How many times do we need to keep circling around an issue? And while we're on that, punctuality is rapidly becoming an endangered virtue -- is it really so hard to arrive on-time? Or has the definition of "on-time" suddenly expanded to include the next additional fifteen minutes?
- Tons of email. "Hey, I've just sent you an email -- can you have a look at it?" What was supposed to be a tool for efficiency has now become the bane of the corporate world. Now everyone needs to be copied in on almost everything -- the sender's backside could then be covered in case someone asks a question, and he/she can safely and smugly say "But I cc'ed you on that one." So I'm supposed to wade through the mound of email and find the message that I could have known about earlier if you had just picked up the effing phone instead!
The most frustrating thing about it -- even our older daughter's school sometimes acts the same way! I used to think that Parent-Teacher Conferences should be scheduled well in advance, like, a week's notice at the very least. And to be fair, that has been the case in the past.
Thursday night though, I was jolted into a near-panic attack by the note attached to the little girl's school diary -- the PTC was to be on Friday afternoon, the following day! Both Mama and Papa's schedules were tightly packed, so what could we do? We almost always go together to get our daughter's report card and talk with her class adviser. This time we agreed I would do it, after a meeting I had.
And so that day went on: I went to meetings, talked to people, attended to a visitor, and was immersed in a slew of issues. Hubby's day was pretty much the same story.
By the time hubby and I could finally sit down and catch our bearings, it was a few minutes shy of seven. Shutting down the laptops, stashing stuff in bags, locking our office doors were done in short order -- we could at last call it a weekend!
We were just pulling into our driveway when I was struck by a truly horrifying realization: I had absolutely forgotten to go to school! That had never, ever, happened before.
I could of course rationalize and say that if the PTC schedule had been given out way in advance I could have worked it into my timetable. It could have wormed its way into my brain and I would not have forgotten about it. And that would be true. I would have gotten used to the idea, and I would purposely have kept that part of my day open.
My husband tells me not to blame myself too much about it. That we can find a mutually agreeable date next week with our little girl's teacher. Indeed we can. It's a simple matter, really.
But the fact remains -- I forgot all about it. And as a mother that's a hard thing to swallow. Made all the more bittersweet by the fact that the little one has a gold medal standing again this last term.
Our precious, smart, sweet little girl, who was so generous of heart that she did not even whine about it, nor harbour any grudge. I am so proud of her.
One of the plus factors of working in the same company as your spouse is that you get to give (and receive) gentle reminders during the work-day to breathe, to relax, to pull yourself together, and when to call it a day. I'm quite thankful for that.
He boosted my spirits up and suggested we just all go out for a quiet dinner with the kids. To Pizza Hut, where the little ones enjoyed the food and had a bit of space to move around. And although the service there had much to be desired (that will be the subject of another post), it was a chance for us to appreciate what was important.
At dinnertime that night I felt a greater sense of accomplishment than the rest of my workday. I pray that we make more of a difference in our roles as mother and father than our office personas.
That night my husband I were not engineers, we were not managers. We were simply parents.
No comments:
Post a Comment