Tonight is the Eve of another new beginning. I start a new position tomorrow.
For the past five months I've been working at Utah Community Action. My sole job responsibility was payroll. While I learned alot in my short time there, I was also painfully bored most of the time. There wasn't enough for me to do. In all honesty however, I have lost perspective on what is a realistic amount of work that a given person is supposed to be able to accomplish in an average work day. I didn't, and I still don't, know how to come into a job and not feel completely and totally overwhelmed with my task list the second I come through the door. I didn't access work email from home. All of my email and tasks were finished at the end of every day. Nothing went home with me. I guess that it is supposed to be an healthy version of work....and it felt completely alien to me. Even with me leaving the position, I had everything done when I left. I had my replacement trained (well as much as she wanted to listen to me) and I also wrote a 32-page manual detailing all of the tasks my position did, timelines, etc before I left. Yes.....I wrote 32-pages of detailed step-by-step instructions. This means that I am more thorough and anal than most people realize. I teared up when I left the office on Friday afternoon, and I will miss the people I worked with. But I won't miss the job, or the boredom of constantly trying to beg extra tasks off of people.
Tomorrow I start as Program Manager at the Utah Developmental Disabilities Council. Its a job where I get to do and develop programs....not have to wear fifteen-million other hats. Don't get me wrong, I like the finance stuff, but after my time at UCA....I definitely can't do just that all day. I need to be out and working with people. And I'll get to do that. I should be ecstatic....but if the past year has taught me anything, I need to be wary of the universe giving me a simultaneous pat on the back and punch in the gut....because it seems to be happening all too often lately.
As a chronic procrastinator I need deadlines outside of myself that I can fight against. I don't really have any of those at the moment. It's weird and odd. This weekend for example, yeah, there is a list of things that I "could" do....but it would make no difference to anyone else in the world if I did them or not. So after I finished my job 3 hours, I took a shower and a nap....read a few chapters in a book and then made myself stop because I have stuff to do. But I really don't. I feel....what I guess is relaxation....but it feels alien to me as well. Normally writing helps me work this stuff out....but it doesn't seem to help.
Perhaps instead of the paragraphs above I just should have put this: Finished one job, starting a new one. Still fairly mixed up in the head, likelihood of that getting fixed anytime in the near future- nil.