Yes, I’m still alive and today I’m even writing… :-)

I wanted to write this blog post since Monday afternoon, but I just never got around to do so. Even tonight I was tempted to postpone it for another day, but I have quite a few things scheduled or planned tomorrow and I was afraid this post would stay unwritten for another day. I don’t even have anything important to write about, just lots and lots of everyday madness. More than usual probably, otherwise I would have gotten around writing this post early than late Friday night..
I’m once again kind of busy at work. Not in the sense of a huge amount of work to do, but in the sense of a variety of different smaller tasks, which I have to coordinate and most of all keep track of. I am usually good at organizing and coordinating, but this time this stuff just wears me down. I spent all of my Tuesday evening to finish an urgent job from my “home office”. At least someone else offered to take over planning and organizing the event, I complained about last week. And I’m grateful for that, because on Monday I realized that I messed up another job I had to do. Messed up big time. At least that’s what it felt like to me even though looking back on it, it wasn’t really that bad and there was no harm done and I could fix it all. But it still upset me. I was working so thoroughly on all but one aspects of the job and … Boom! I messed that one up. Like I said, there was no harm done and everyone involved probably forgot my mishap within minutes. Not me, though, I was beating myself up for the rest of the day. I’m just one of those persons who can’t  let it got, when they mess up. But at least I’m over it by now :-)

Besides work I was insanely busy with various stuff of my local Greens. We have local elections coming up and we still hadn’t put up our elections posters around town. So that’s what I basically spent doing Monday night, yesterday evening and a couple of hours this afternoon. There is some other election campaigning stuff I’ll have to take care of and I will have to do that on the weekend. I was actually planning to do some of the stuff tonight, but there is no way I could concentrate on that tonight.

Finally found something to cheer me up…

I should avoid checking my bank account at the moment. A few days ago I got the last credit card bill with all the expenses of my Scotland vacation. And today I spent another 150 EUR on a whim. But I just had to, because otherwise this day and this week would have ended in such a grumpy mood again. I needed something to cheer me up!

At work I’m in charge of organizing / coordinating some smaller events which will take place in August. One of my colleagues – lets call him A – suggested I ask person B from another organization to develop part of the concept. B willingly and enthusiastically agreed to do it and I mailed him the details of the task he offered to take care of. I didn’t hear anything from him for a few days and when I called him last week, he told me, that he passed on the task to person C from yet another NGO and that C would get back to me this week. Ok…
After a few mails and messages left on mailboxes I finally managed to talk to C this afternoon, just to find out that B didn’t really brief him what the task was and that he will be away on vacation for the complete next week. Which in the end means that I have to take care of all the stuff on my own after all. I could have already worked on that during the last two weeks, but of course I counted on B + C to keep the promise to take care of this stuff.
What really really pissed me off though was that when I informed colleague A about the whole back and forth, he just told me, that this was person B’s typical behaviour: promising to do something but not following through but pass the job on to somebody else. Hello ?!?! You suggested to ask B for help. You could have also told me that nothing would come from it. Actually you could have just not suggested B as help in the first place and I would have taken care of the stuff on my own. So f*cking unbelievable!

Various Stuff From This Week…

There are so many different blog posts in my head, but I just never got around to write them this week. Or I didn’t feel like writing or I didn’t know how to put my thoughts into words. And I’m not even talking about the idea for a post I had even two weeks ago and still haven’t written yet. This will be one of these posts with various topics. They also might seem rather random…

We had an eventful week at work. Not a lot of big events took place, but some bigger issues were solved. For the better I hope. I still feel bad about some things, I neglected to do or forgot about. Maybe I need some re-organisation of my field and schedules as well. And I definitely need to keep better track of assignments and to-do-lists and such. Yeah, I still feel bad. And then I’m annoyed that I feel that bad, because in my mind these mishaps always are bigger and I messed up much worse than I actually did. My screwed up mind and low self-esteem just like to make me feel worse than I actually have to. On the other hand, it’s a good thing that I at least catch my mind playing these dirty tricks on me and I can take a step back and re-evaluate and in most cases realize that it’s not all that bad. I don’t know… I just spend quite some time thinking about these things this week and how I can change my way of thinking and feeling.

I also spent a lot of time listening to a song I heard for the first time on Tuesday. Well, according to last.fm I have listened to it four times during the last three years, but I honestly don’t remember. on Tuesday evening though I was enjoying the sunny weather outside on my patio, I had just painted my toe nails (because it’s freaking summer, even though it doesn’t feel like it since Wednesday) and was listening to a really great song collection on my personal last.fm station on my wireless headphones. Life was good.
Suddenly there was this new song, which I liked from the start and during the second verse I was totally hooked. The song is “Calling You” by Blue October. [follow the link to listen to the complete song on last.fm]. And it was one of these moments you can’t explain, at least I always have a hard time explaining why I’m crazy about a song. It might be the lyrics or the music or the voice or a combination of all of it. I can’t say. Maybe I was and still am just in the right mood to like a song about being madly in love. Which I am not at the moment, so maybe the song should rather make me depressed. But it doesn’t. Not at all. I just love it.

All The Things I Have To Deal With…

Let’s see what’s keeping me busy at the moment.

Work. Two jobs and in both there is a lot going on right. There is a lot to organize and deadlines to keep and just a lot of things to get done.

Local Politics / Green Party: Besides the usual town council work, the municipal budget debate started last week in all committees and the town council. Which means a lot more preperation and discussion among us Greens. We will be spending the whole weekend away, discussing the budget and working on additional proposals and stuff.
We’re also in the midst of preparing the election campaign, because there is supposed to be local election in early June. We are way behind with our preparation, and haven’t even finished putting together our electional programme. That’s one of the reasons I keep my fingers crossed for the State Constitutional Court tomorrow to rule in favour of postponing the election date till September. Well, there are a lot of other reasons why local elections in June were a stupid idea. Reasons based on my comprehension of democracy and all, but I have to admit, our lack of prepration definitely calls for voting later in the year :-)
We are also planning a special “Carbondioxide Lent” campaign with a few smaller events. It sounded like a great idea at first and I still think it is. We just haven’t really managed to organize that many events yet, not to mention we haven’t prepared any press and PR stuff yet.
I think the major problem with all this is, that our local Green Party consists of just a few people and even of those there are just 4-5 who are actively actually doing anything. Sometime I feel like I am the only person who is doing anything. Well or at least I think I’m the only person who is aware of how many things are not done, although they should be.

I Need Hermione’s Time-Turner!

I started the last entry with “I’m so exhausted”, I think. Well I still am. Although not that much exhausted but more stressed. Again or still. My week needs more days and my days need more hours. What’s really annoying is that it’s not even fun or personal stuff that’s keeping me busy. But work and local politics. And work :-)
I even have to do a lot of work-related stuff tomorrow, even though Friday actually is my day off. In job#1 at least, but I still got a lot of stuff to organize in job#2. Phonecalls to make and all. I usually start my Friday with watching Grey’s Anatomy. I’m such an addict, that I can’t imagine pushing that back until the afternoon. But I also don’t want to be forced to take a break in the middle of an episode to answer some phonecalls. Which might happen, if I don’t get some other stuff done in the morning. So I guess I’ll have to get up extra early, watch the episode and start working / phoning around 8.30 or 9 AM. We’ll see. Don’T get me started on all the other not-work-related stuff I have to get done over the weekend. I really really have to read some of the grad school literature and work on my term papers. I haven’t done that for a long while. But I don’t know when I should have found the time for that…

So I’m off to bed soon, probably listening for a bit to Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter. These audiobooks are really awesome and been a big joy to me in the last couple of days. During the annyoing commute to work and such. Another positive thing to report: I started with Kieser Training again today after I took a 3 week break because of the lower back pain. My back didn’t bother me at all during the work out and I feel that I’ve worked out. Which feels great.

And because I’m so tired, there are just a few thoughts on the new LOST

Subconscious Refusal ?

Once again I have the distinct feeling that my life sucks. I can’t really say why. Well, I can, but it probably doesn’t make sense, because it seems like it would be easy to do something about it. My inability to do just that, ist what sucks the most, I guess. I feel overstrained by so many things I have to do. All of them rather ordinary, nothing super special, nothing too complicated or too difficult. I guess it’s just the sum of all the crap. I’m beyond annoyed by my colleague. I’m too tired now to explain what’s the problem. Believe me I actually tried, but it’s complicated to explain. The thing is, that he obviously doesn’t get why his behaviour annoys me. On the other hand: I’m too nice to actually call him out on his crap. I like him. Basically. It’s just… ARGH! But I’m annoyed about it, and then I’m mad at myself, that I don’t tell him, that it’s annoying. Maybe it will help that we have a meeting with our bosses this week. Not about that stuff, but it probably will come up anyway.
I’ve got a bunch of different assignments in job#2. None of them is a big deal, it’s just the sum of them together. I feel like I’m constantly forgetting something. And I am. Which could be avoided if I just work more diligently on all of that. And there are a couple of things to do in the local politics part of my life. Quite many actually. Various council meetings, electorial campaigns that have to be organized and even more meetings.. Once again I feel like I’m losing track of the things I have to do and who I have to meet up with. I probably just have to get my everyday life better organized. I’m usually good at organizing, and I don’t know why I’m not capable to just do that in my life at the moment. Recently I haven’t spent any time working on the grad school assignments, which are due in April / May.

Access Denied…

I’ve spent most of my work life so far in offices with internet access. Always accessable internet access. Until now neither a boss nor IT administrator told me, that access to any site is not permitted. Well, except for some “dangerous” sites, which I never wanted to access in the first place. But I never had a problem strolling around the internet, visiting here and there and especially the places I usually hang out. It’s not that I spent my work day doodling on the internet. I work on my assignments and doing all the stuff I have to. But there are coffee breaks and moments when you wait for the printing job to finish and so on :-)

So imagine my shock (yes, I have to admit it shocked me) when after my week away I came back to work this morning and had to find out that some (quite a few!) of my bookmarks are blocked, because they are of the “chat/social network” type. Allright I can exist without being able to check if there’s an update on my favourite fanfic. But of course this security filter also blocked…. yes, livejournal, twitter and I don’t know what else. I didn’t even try, because I felt caught doing something illegal…

I know, I shouldn’t complain because a lot of employees don’t have any sort of (private) internet access at work at all. But… Damn, I got so used to it. And I’m really really going to miss it. Of course I can twitter via my cell phone but that’s just not the same and rather complicated if you only want to send out a short tweet.

More miscellaneous reasons for me to be cranky today: a trial magazine subscribtion I didn’t even ask for, lousy weather, public transport problems and still suffering from side- and after-effects of the steroids. I couldn’t really get much work done at the office this morning, because my head felt like it was going to explode any minute. It didin’t hurt, it literally felt like it would explode. Some fresh air help though and now I’m finally home after a town council committee meeting and getting some groceries to finally stock my fridge. I’m skipping the green party meeting tonight and will try to relax at home with a simple dinner (nothing fancy but at least warm food prepared by myself) and in a few moments I’m watching the legal drama “Die Anwälte”. Thanks to DVR with time-shift :-)

And here are some random music and literature recommendation: Brandi Carlile (Grey’s 5.05 made me put her music on again and I still and again love it) and Zadie Smith. I finally started reading “White Teeth” this morning during my commute and just like I was with her novel “On Beauty” I’m once again totally blown away. Such a wonderful writer…

Tuesday didn’t start any better…

This might become a blog-a-thon day, as I already don’t have any motivation to work (=unpack the boxes) and already have something to vent about. Well, maybe not really vent, but the day started almost as bad as yesterday.
On my way to work this morning the train had to stop at Bochum, which is two stops from my destination and workplace Essen. The announcement on the train said that the tracks were closed for about 90 minutes. They didn’t give us any alternative until a few moments before we had to get off. There was a S-Bahn (which stops more frequently) taking another route. The next one would leave in 20 minutes and I knew that there would be another faster train to Essen around that time as well and hoped that would be able to take the alternative route as well. Anyway I decided to use the 20 minutes to run over to Starbucks to get my morning coffee.

There were no costumers at all at the Starbucks, which for a moment made me fear it might not be open yet, but it was after 9 AM so it had to be and of course it was. It gave me the chance to finally ask the barista in which order an order should be placed anyway. I was always wondering, but never was sure. I almost got it right though: Let the barista know if it’s to go (so they can get the pap er cup), size, then special stuff, like low-fat, additional flavour and the cafe itself at last. By the way, why isn’t low-fat the standard milk in German Starbucks as well, just like it is in Canada? Make it at least a little less un-healthy :-)
Unfortunately that barista obviously wasn’t able to multi-task (explain the order system, take care of my order and attend to new costumers), because he messed up my order and I got a hot white chocolate instead a white caffee moccha. I don’t know how THAT happened, but I only realized when I took the first sip on my way back to the station *sigh*

I got on the faster train then and for the whole 15 minute trip I had to listen to two young men talking in the most lowclass way I experienced recently. I don’t want to repeat some of it here, but it was really annoying. And of course the raised their voices (or didn’t bother to keep it down) so that the whole railway car could / had to listen. ARGH!
And of course there were still a few things missing in this temp office when I got here and I had to clean some cupboards before I could get stuff in. In what kind of mess did the guy working here before, existed in here?

Ok, now that I got that off my chest, maybe I should really start unpacking some boxes and doing some other stuff…

Close to collapse

I expected this day to be a ordinary start into an ordinary week at work. Not too stressful (it’s summer break after all), but I had some things I wanted to start working on. And I thought that I might (or probably would) be able to even do some not-work-related stuff like look into some material for my term paper, finally write the blog post about the Killers Top 10 and things like that.

When I approached my office on the top floor of the building I was already greeted by the janitor and some one from administration. And the floor was strangely busy. It turned out that during the building / roof repairs last week (which made me leave my office early on Thursday because it was too loud to be working) they discovered severe damages to the roof, which might damage the rooms’ ceiling sooner or later. In other words: There is the small chance that the offices ceilings could collapse any time soon. Which of course meant we wer not allowed to be in the offices anymore. Craftsmen are going to tear down the ceiling and check the whole roof for damages and repair them and then put the ceiling back up. According to the administration departement, this will take about 8 – 10 weeks.
Thank god there are always a few vacant offices somewhere, but it still requires a lot of logistics to pack up all books and files and folders and lamps and coffee makers and all that stuff from a couple of offices and move them to some other place. At least the computer and phone was set up around noon, because it feels weird to be offline. Especially when you have got nothing to do, because you’ve already boxed up everything. But while I’m waiting for the movers to get all my boxes to my new temporary office, I can at least write about it… :-)

Work, football and phone numbers

A Fresh start into a new week and I was rather busy at work this morning. Maybe not really busy, as I had time to check mails and journals and blogs and message boards every once in a while. But at least I wasn’t that bored that I could start to post something to my blog. Is it weird that I feel good about having something to do at work? No, not at all, because I definitely don’t want to risk bore-out-syndrome :) I left an hour early, because I have to this mindmap thing. As I can’t install any software at the office computer (because our office is part of a larger computer network and we’re not allowed to install anything) I have to do that work from home, which I will in a few minutes.