That sinking feeling

    As Sunday evening rolls in, I am beginning to feel the sense of dread that tomorrow morning is getting closer. This week promises to be especially onerous since I will spend at least 3 more days working at the alternate work-site. This guarantees that my regular work will continue to pile up since no one else can do it. Why am I so special that I am the only one trusted to perform these special tasks, yet not authorized to delegate my normal responsibilities in my absence? This is becoming an all-too-regular occurrence as the boss continues to want to play in the sandbox of data granularity. While a challenge is nice from time to time, this is getting out of hand very quickly and I am getting very tired of it.

     I have been at this job for nearly 9 years and have acquired a great deal of rather specified knowledge as a result. I am sure that this is the underlying reason I get picked for these projects, and I am somewhat proud that I am relied upon for things. The frequency of these tasks is becoming the unbearable problem. If I can finally get this off my plate it will probably be Wednesday at the earliest. This means that I have not been at the office to perform my regular work since the Friday before Labor Day!

    The absence of my work on regular issues has already been noted. There is nothing I can do about this. After the last of these episodes in August, I worked nearly 50 extra hours in less than 2 weeks and was never able to recover that time. OT is not authorized on the contract that I support, and I made it quite clear that I was NOT going to put in any extra time that could not be recouped again. Hence, my regular workload keeps growing. It will eventually get under control, but only in the course of a normal 40-hour week, if I ever have another one of those.

    Those are the reasons that I dread tomorrow morning. Until a better opportunity comes along. Honestly, I am too tired over the weekend to conduct a proper job search. I am going to have an early dinner and try to get as much rest as I can this evening and hope that I can return to a normal routine by Thursday.