Lately, I've found myself gathering about me the favorite items of past supervisors and co-workers that I've admired or respected. There is the special pen, the footrest, the ruler, the backpack, the warm up suits, etc . . .
I think the hope at some level is that if I surround myself with their accoutrements, some of their wisdom, skill and experience will magically rub off, too.
I am and have been for a while disturbingly over busy. The kind of over busy where I know everything I need to do even for work will not get done. In the midst of this, I am surrounded by what feels like legions of well meaning family and friends who want a piece of me, who many times feel that their call or visit will lighten my load. This is sweet, but not really the kind of help I need.
Of late the tenor has changed. Friends, especially, tired of hearing that I am still busy have in the last week taken to advice of this sort: "How hard can it really be?" And, "Everyone is busy, why do you think you are different?"
And in my mind, I have the time management video from the Franklin Covey training running on auto. In it, an extremely harried and overworked worker gets dumped on by everyone, ends up not able to do anything well, eats horribly, does not exercise and then I think the video fades to black. Afterwards, we are lectured on "Big Rocks" and invited to really trash this poor overworked individual. (It is after all, in true Franklin Covey fashion, the idiot's own fault.)
But, in my mind, a second video is playing from my best supervisor to date. In it, she is sitting in her office with piles of incoming requests and talking about the "need to triage." At the time, I love her colorful language and wonder if she is being a tad overdramatic.
Of course, this is my need, too, the need to triage and as with my former boss (she considered "boss" to be a four-letter word) many people will be unhappy around me. I cannot do it all. I am only willing to stretch so far. I deserve some time for me, some limited sanity time.
I will take up my arms from the annals of former colleagues and head into the fray . . .
1 comments:
"It helps, now and then,
to step back and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts;
it is even beyond our view.
We accomplish in our lifetime
only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God"s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying the kingdom always lies beyond us.
We plan the seeds that one day will grow;
We water the seeds already planted,
knowing they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation realizing that.
We may never see the results,
but that is the difference between the master building (God) and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders;
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen"
Archbp.Oscar Romero
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