I know, I’ve been a total slack on writing, and posting, and uploading and keeping things going, because web publishing in some form is always important to me, but…man it’s just been insane lately.
The man we offered our management position to turned it down. We are headed by far into the busiest season of our year (Buyback and Summer Welcome) and,…we are down essentially our results wrangler, and content developer. Now I’m no slough at writing, developing and creating creative media, marketing or messages. I really enjoy it too. But when you are trying to tackle 9 of those messages a day while managing the equipment, the supplies inventory, and managing novice students who need what seems like constant oversight or management,…it’s a lot to tackle. I really think Meggan (interim from PR) is kind of hitting the burn-out point too. I can’t slip in more hours, because it leads me to Part 2.
Grad School, especially a program that you have absolutely no background in…is a full time job. I could singularly fill every moment of free time with homework, or development for my masters. Hell, I can’t even study for the GRE, because it takes up so much time. In my problem solving class we are developing an activity for med/med. business students about Six Sigma, and in web…well that’s a constant flow of new material. I’ve somewhat managed html (when I don’t let my head get hot and my temper rage)…and immediately we’ve moved onto CSS the no holds bar, “there’s rules, but we’re not going to tell you” bastard child of all content organization and management. Seriously. I just finished up five straight hours of reading (out of one book) and retyping activities into my html kit to try to really work through the concepts of this new foreign slush of letters, slashes, combinations and tags. Tags that are now separated by semicolons and can be grouped into seemingly thousands of little combos…with the threat that if you screw it up…it doesn’t work…and you get to troubleshoot,…which is like coding without fingers and a missing eye.
Lastly, but most relevant. Grandma was in the hospital again. From what I understand through the string of emails they had been kind of upping and downing and switching things around in her pain/cancer treatment medicine regiment, and…something just wasn’t mixed right and she started becoming really…blurry. Her speech didn’t make sense; she was rambling about things that weren’t there…so they took her in. She’s home now, because we think it’s best that now that they’ve adjusted her meds back that she recover comfortably and be in familiar surroundings. This stress resulted in a major argument with my mom…who argues and rationalizes (or lack thereof) like a five year old child. Still aren’t talking…just kind of giving it some space, but at some point I think a major discussing is looming about the way she communicates with people, because it seems to be a chronic problem with the four of us.
So that’s life as it is. In a week I turn 26. There is a new show on NBC called “Quarter Life” based on what I understand is an internet show about people surviving their middle twenties. When they are out of school and trying to balance what was and what still kind of is with what’s ahead. After a great Google search the past few weeks, and reading tons of blogs, it’s nice to see that I’m not the only one who sees this time as a bigger transition than I’ve ever gone through…or at least lacking the padding and …gradual sequencing the others did. This one feels like day to day I’m cliff diving into new and surprising things…some good, some bad, all different and requiring rethought on the way I perceive and problem solve.
In any sense, I’m not dead. Just thoughtful lately…a bit more of an introvert and someone who’s watching (not in a creepy way.)
Jessica
