Wednesday 23rd August 2017

This is how it all happened.
I thought I was being smart.  Given that the person I handed the School of the Sword payments over to is off long-term sick, I thought rather than panic day to day, I’d bunch all the tasks together and do them in bulk.
It made sense.
So as the requests mounted and mounted, I did the urgent ones and then the ones I could put off, moved to the weekend AFTER fightcamp.
What a brilliant plan.
Except…
The edits took a bit longer than expected and so the weekend where I should be doing all the tasks, I was basically nose deep in novel.  PLUS, a load more tasks came in.  PLUS, there’s a 4 figure sum in outstanding monies that needs to be chased.
So I finish the edits to find a tsunami of actions, some I’d even forgotten about (because I’d not even been smart enough to put them into ToDoist).  Couple this with a hellish week and tonight I’m stressed and swamped.
I had to get up ridiculously early today.  We’ve got people doing some security testing coming in this week, except the test they need to do means they had to come into Watford.  And because they are not staff, they need to be escorted.
And so the plan was to split it between the three in my team, where we all sat them for a couple of days.  Except, one team member has very suddenly and completely out-of-character gone off long term ill, and suddenly we’re one third of our resource down.
This in itself shouldn’t have been a problem for me as I’ve not had to pick up too much of the slack.  BUT, I get to Watford and for some reason find that someone has repatched all the cabling overnight and nothing works.
Gah!  Stress!
I was saved by a co-worker who I did not know but was so awesome we wrote some feedback to his boss with a view that he can use it in his end of year review.  But we lost half a day, so I had to stay late, which meant I hit all the traffic and didn’t get home until some 15 hours after I left this morning.
And I also came back to more of the mountain of payment tasks as people ask questions that need answering, invoices need adjusting, people need chasing, things need creating.
And so I’ve basically spent the entire day stressed out. And have somehow got to the end of the day without murdering anyone. I do not know how.
I’d hoped to do some spell and grammar checking on the document today, but there’s just been no time for that.  An assistant has been found to help me with some of the school of the sword stuff but I just hope that they keep on top of it, because if they don’t it takes 5 times as long.
This is why I don’t do things with money.  It stresses me out.  I know people tend to use OCD as a throwaway line these days but there’s something about me where sums have to add up.  Maybe it’s the pure mathematician in me.  In an old job, I once had a 6 million pound invoice that I was trying to audit and I was something like 2p out.  The accountants said it didn’t matter, but I couldn’t sleep!
And so it is that with all the invoicing… it has to be perfect, and I end up getting frantic and annoying but for all the right reasons.  Because if the assistant says “Oh, I forgot about that”, then they are going to have a huge problem and muggins here will have to sort it out.
So basically, today, I’ve not been good company, and the 2 large bottles of beer I had at the end of today were totally needed, if not for my benefit, for the benefit of those around me.
This is hellweek.  And I’ll be glad when it’s over.
If you want to follow more of my journey, then be sure to check me on my social channels.  Likewise, if you’d like me to expand on any point mentioned above, please say so in the comments.

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