Friday, October 31, 2008

Holy Cow, work cuts into my leisure time.

I have a new appreciation for Pirate, who works a 40-hour work week, like I'm doing, and then goes home to the twin munchkins. Honestly, I don't know how you folks have done this all this time.

Here's how my week fleshes out:

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I do master swim from 5:30 to 6:30 and then in 30 minutes I shower, blow my hair dry, put on makeup, and hit the car with Sweet Baboo, so that we can do our 45 minute commute to the VA. Tuesday and Wednesday nights after work I'm still seeing clients for 2-3 hours. Thursdays, I have a 3-hour class in Social Policy.

Tuesdays, and Thursday mornings, instead of a swim, I am going to run. I tried running this week but because my injury is worse, I can't run on anything but trails, and so the obvious choice seems to be to go down to the trails near my gym and run in the dark, then do the shower/hair/makeup thing and hop in the car and commute with Baboo.

The week wraps up with a nice easy trail run in the foothills with Baboo. Saturday mornings, I'm doing two spin classes back to back. Sunday is long slow run day. Whew.

So at work, I've spent the week getting trained for various things and refreshing my understanding of cells, and neurons, neurotransmitters, and other such things. I'm moving onto brain-related syndromes and disorder. Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, for instance, is interesting to learn about. And sad. I'm beginning training next week in several mental disorders and in using symptom rating scales. I also set up my new office, and ordered a couple of things to decorate it.

They gave me a pager this week. I was all excited when it went off - I felt all important, but it was a wrong number. When I was a teacher, they'd just shout out my name over a campus-wide PA system. This is way cooler. Plus, It's exciting to know that I'm important enough for them to want to get hold of me somehow.

I'm told that the excitement wears off pretty quickly.

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8 comments:

  1. Triathlon and training and parenting, it's a big pull. It does make it hard.

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  2. The pager excitement does wear off, I am sorry to say. In fact, the fourth time it goes off on a Saturday you will want to either pitch it out the car window on the way in to the office or hand it to the next person you see and tell them "not to worry, you'll figure it out".

    Congrats on being busy though. It is how things get done. :)

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  3. I hope that when the pager excitement wears off it is replaced with a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment for the work you will be doing for people who really need the help - and that none of that gets destroyed by mindless bureaucracy, etc.

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  4. Is that a snake with that half naked girl? GROSS!

    Wow you are a busy gal and must wake up at 4 smth to go swimming! I'm in awe!

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  5. You will figure out a way to balance everything. It might mean you train less or for shorter distances, but if you want it you can make it happen.

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  6. I have a work pager too. Mostly I try not to accidentally flush it down the toilet, but then fantasizing they won't make me replace it if I did.

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  7. Yeah after about 15 or so years of being on call, the pager sure loses is magic. If you put it on vibrate at night it makes a very distinctive sound bouncing around on your dresser, one you will never forget.

    You'll learn to do things around your work schedule. That's why I'm at the gym at 4:30am!

    Good luck with your new job, it sounds like it's going to be great!

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  8. You said it perfectly - this work thing really cuts into my social life! I can't really explain the need to flush that pager down the toilet. Maybe under my car's (named Athena, btw) tire. More satisfying. 8 months till no pager!!!

    Congrats on the new job. It's wonderful how much you'll help people :)

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 I'm no longer involved in multisport or endurance sports. I've started my own business, a psychotherapist specializing in anxiety d...