Catching up…

I haven’t meant to be so quiet in my blogging lately. Work has been the main culprit keeping me away. I’m getting home, completely exhausted, and the last thing I want to do is plug into a computer again (after hours of it at work). I also had some phone photo issues (now fixed) which put some stitchy updates on hold.

But hey, that’s life, right? In any case, I’m doing okay. Crazy at work, but that seems to be the norm, and it’s just getting busier for me (which worries me). I’ve had another person assigned to my already over-extended workload, and I confess to being more than a little concerned about burnout because I was already doing the work of two people, but I’m trying to keep up as best I can and try to stay positive about the situation. The biggest positive in this is that I do genuinely like all of the people I support, and I think that most of them understand that I’m really being stretched, although they still need their work done, so they can’t afford to be too lenient.

Our office also recently switched to a paperless filing system that is really causing some backlog on my end. After my entire working life using folders on computer drives to stay organized, I now have to switch to what’s essentially a document management/filing system that makes sense on paper but I’m finding surprisingly difficult to adjust to. It’s dropped my workload speed down quite a bit, which is not helping the stress level. I’m hoping that I’ll mentally adjust soon so I can speed things up.

On a positive note, I received a VERY good yearly review at work and received a raise that did mitigate one huge stress factor – an upcoming monthly commuter train increase of $75 that goes into effect on July 1st, which will bring my monthly pass total to $316 per month. It’s not as bad as some of the proposals that were out there by the MBTA (one would have raised my pass up by $127 per month, which would have forced me to look for a new job), but it’s still not an easy amount to swallow. My raise has essentially eliminated that particular problem. I’m hoping I’ll still be able to bring home some additional money after the transportation increase, but as the raise hasn’t hit a paycheck yet, I’m still not sure how taxes play into it all.

Needless to say, I’m a little run down and in need of some vacation days, but I need to wait for a few weeks after taking that week off in March. I’m just waiting to see how all of the new assignment factors at work play out for a few weeks before I ask for time.

I have been doing a lot of stitching this month, which I’m setting up to share in multiple entries over the next few days (so I’m not disappearing for weeks on end again). I completely missed my own WIPocalypse posting last month – so I’ll have a lot to share this week!

I promise to be better about blogging this month!