It’s Been A Week

It has been a busy week at work, full of ups and downs. My favorite times have been meeting one on one with staff and getting to know them better. They are so such a wonderful, creative, enthusiastic, positive group. I feel so lucky to get to learn from them.

I’m finding I’m really struggling with all the questions coming at me from staff and service providers about so many different things that I don’t have answers for. Not having overlap time with outgoing ED to start with and not only having a very limited number of hours to work with her each week has been very challenging. This is my second time in an interim ED role in an organization where the ED had been there for a long time and so much organizational information is in her head and not written down. I really see the value of documenting processes and procedures, especially as I try to figure out budgets and account coding with multiple grants. 

I have to keep reminding myself that I can’t expect to know how to do everything and it is going to be challenging at times. I went through something similar when I was in my other interim ED job. But I can still hear that voice in my head telling me I’m not doing a very good job and I should be doing better. I hate when the shoulds come out. I found I was reassuring myself the same way I did with my son a couple weeks ago when he started a new position at work and was dealing with feelings of incompetence. It’s amazing how it can just make me crash down and feel like I’m not capable of doing anything. You would think by now I would be better able to handle things like this and know that it’s part of being new and learning. There’s going to be a lot of things I don’t know and I won’t be sure how to deal with. I got very frustrated trying to work through the complicated and convoluted county grant reapproval process. It was crazy how much time I spent trying to figure out how to access and pull together the information I needed. I was hired to do work that was more strategic and impactful, but the fact that a grant deadline was looming and no one else had access to the information meant it fell on me. I as I delved deeper into it I realized there were so many complicated parts to it and I really needed more time to get a better understanding. The time pressure really made it hard for me. 

I’ve also been challenged learning to navigate and use Google Drive as an organizational tool. I am so used to shared servers and I’m finding the way Google drive works more challenging, things aren’t organized in a way that makes sense to me. It’s also been the same using Gmail instead of Outlook. But I’m learning and trying to take ita day at a time, giving myself a break for not working as efficiently as I would like to right away.

One highlight this week was on Tuesday when one of my college roommates came over and brought a delicious summer salad. We took Winston on a walk and then sat outside at Emmy’s, enjoyed her yummy food and the warm, but not yet hot, weather. It was so good getting to spend time with her. We both talked about our work challenges and family stuff and what our other roommates were getting up to. One of our roommates, Angela, retired last week! I can’t get over that. Anyway, it was fantastic to spend time with her. When Emmy got home Stacy broke out dessert, moist lemon squares with a raspberry on top dusted with powdered sugar. She brought enough for Emmy and I to have more the next night. What an awesome friend. I can’t believe that we’ve known each other for 38 years. There are many days I don’t even feel that old, though there have been some where I have felt a lot older than my current age.

I got to spend the last two days of my work week in Placerville looking after my sister‘s pets. I haven’t spent a lot of time outside because it’s been averaging 107° every day, but I got up at 4 o’clock on Friday morning so I could enjoy the cooler weather, if you consider 78° to be cool. It was a wonderful time to be out. I took the dogs for a walk as soon as it was light, we were all very happy to be out for a bit.

Here is a short photo journey of my week.