It’s Saturday night and I’ve spent the day in the office, supporting a comics workshop in our creative studio. I like working the odd Saturday – it means I get to see some of the welcomers and volunteers who aren’t always working in the week.
Crucially, as I wasn’t in the workshops, I got to spend some time swimming in the depths of my inbox. You may remember that June was a bit of a write-off workwise and May was a tad hectic while we got ready to open. Emails were flooding in the whole time and I wasn’t able to tackle them with my usual aplomb.
A previous director, when I left the organisation, said that he’d miss me as he knew that if something got handed to me he knew it would get done quickly and efficiently. Oh, how times change…right now my inbox is in triple figures and I’m constantly worried I’m going to miss something important. People won’t get paid as i haven’t coded and forwarded their invoice. One of my tutors will send me a materials list and I won’t see it. I’ll miss a meeting. It’s stressful, and what seems to happen on a regular basis is that I’ll reply to an email and then they’ll send me another one! It’s never ending!
I’m off this week on actual leave and wanted to feel as if there wouldn’t be anything crucial waiting to bite me when I got back. The trouble with being injured but not ill as such is that you have guilt about not working, especially when it’s a busy period, so you stress out and it’s hard to give yourself space to relax* and recover even when you can only see out of one eye.
So today – no meetings – was a great chance to also wrestle the inbox into submission. I deleted, I went for the quick wins, filed the things I’d already dealt with and generally felt a lot better about the whole thing. Now how do I do this for the rest of my life?
*unlike Teddy in this week’s cover image. He has no trouble giving himself space to relax as you can see.
Other things making me happy this week:
- Gail’s cinnamon buns
- Cooler weather today
- Thing 1 turning 20 – how did that happen?
- Tiny crochet guinea pig
Next week I’ll be coming live from a mountain in Wales…
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Jade City – Fonda Lee
Crazy as a Loon/Dead as a Dodo/fFree as a Bird – Hailey Edwards
The Art of a Lie – Laura Shepherd-Robinson
A Court of Thorns and Roses – Sarah J. Maas (Audible)
What Kirsty did next 