Back to Work

This whole working thing – it’s hard work. I’ve grown accustomed to sleeping in ’til around 10, eating a breakfast type snack, checking email and blogs, sending job hunt related emails and searching online for jobs, making lunch, running a few errands, dinner, tv, and more blogging as late as I want. It’s been a nice surreal existence. But I was really happy when Tuesday I was asked to work Thursday and Friday, with a stop by the office on Tuesday afternoon. This has been a crazy week. I worked. And I forgot how exhausting it can be. Wow. And in reality I didn’t even truly work a full week. Two networking events (I was too tired for number 3) and two days of work.
Monday I went to an even on how to network better. It was insightful, and I made it through without too much anxiety in talking to new people. We talked about the biggest setbacks encountered when networking and some techniques to overcome them. Then on Tuesday I was asked to freelance at Sesame Workshop Thursday and Friday. I stopped in for awhile that afternoon to view the tape we were going to be showing the kids. Then onto How to Get York Book Published, part 1. It was interesting and not that I’m planning on writing a book or anything, knowing the process can’t hurt. (Unfortunately I skipped part two – Editors and Publishers because I was just too exhausted.) Wednesday was frigid cold, so luckily all we had was a condo board meeting and then a dinner with Bill and Jess. Of course since these were in the evening – it was frigid cold. The downside to the first three days of this week was I didn’t fully prepare myself for sleep deprivation and an early rise. I spent several hours on Wednesday with this blog, posting and updating the format, and finally told myself I’d fix it later it’s after midnight and I have to be up at 6! This is not so good for a non-morning person who has been sleeping in for a month.

Thursday, I was up at 6:20, showered, I even made lunch, and out of the house at 7. At Sesame by 7:35 and on the way to the school. We hit a little unanticipated snow (unanticipated because I never checked the weather) and when we got to the school the lack of cars in the parking lot was of some concern, but the kids were there and ready to go. We set up, and research was on! We showed a 40 minute (so almost full length, missing short segments) episode of Sesame Street to the kids. Then asked them some questions. Then we did it again. And again. I got to watch three episodes of Sesame Street in a row. Or I should rephrase, I got to listen to the SAME episode of Sesame Street three times in a row. I had almost forgotten how there is a threshold of how many times you can watch something before you never want to look at it again. I did not hit this on Thursday. I did hit the threshold of how many times I can listen to others sing the Elmo’s World theme though, as it wasn’t stuck in my head from watching, but only after the repeated singing. It’s almost gone. When we got back I entered data for awhile, and then headed home. It was 4pm when I got there (just after the plane landed in the Hudson) and I took a nap. When I woke up for dinner at 5:30 I knew there was no way I was going to be heading back out into the cold for the book event. But I did watch a little tv and go to bed at a reasonable hour so that I could get up at 6 on Friday.

Friday I did it all again. When I got home I decided that I really just wanted to hang out on the couch. If it’s not too windy we MIGHT take a walk to get some air, and break up the cabin fever. This working thing is hard stuff, but I am so happy I’m back in the rat race. Let’s hope I can do it again next week.