It Pours

What a week! It started fantastic, with a relaxing and productive vacation day on Monday leading up to a procession with one of my bands on Monday night. By Tuesday, I was refreshed and ready to tackle my work. We have a saying around the office, that we have a “feast or famine” workload. Depending on how the schedules for various assignments play out, some days we might have very little to do while others find three or more assignment deadlines crashing. This is one of those weeks.

Four days in and I haven’t made it to the gym once. I’m working on an extra assignment in addition to my regular workload, and stayed an extra hour or two on Tuesday and Wednesday to get caught up. By Thursday I had a better bite on everything, which is probably why folders and comments landed in my freshly emptied inbox by 5 PM. After a nice three-day weekend, I find myself yearning for another vacation already.

No single assignment is all that difficult or challenging; it’s just the classic struggle of prioritizing. Give me too much to do and I don’t know what to do first. At my last job, I’d reached a level of zero famine, and every day was a busy time. So the fact that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and things will quiet down by next week helps. I’ve also found that no matter how intimidating my workload might appear, all of a sudden I turn a page and realize I’ve gotten everything done. And I am back to making checklists, which both help me organize and create a sense of accomplishment when I check stuff off.

What’s making this week particularly hard is that I’m also sick. Around Tuesday night I had a runny nose, albeit only on the left side. I didn’t have any other cold symptoms so I chalked it up to allergies. When I eat right, take vitamins, and exercise regularly I find I can go a year or more without illness. The last time I got really sick was a few months after I’d stopped working out, about a year ago. Back on track, I was sure this couldn’t happen again. But Wednesday morning I wasn’t feeling so good. I was achy and my nose was stuffy and I had a bit of a tickle in my throat.

I doubled up my vitamin C intake and tripled my fluid intake. I find super-hydrating minimizes the most debilitating symptoms, especially sore throats which is the one symptom I cannot endure. I can deal with everything else. By Thursday morning I was achy and borderline feverish. Why this week? Why not one of my slow weeks? I had to design an additional flyer for my last mailing, make corrections on my current mailing, and rough out 14 concepts for approval on the mailing I’m starting, not to mention present concepts for my test assignment to a panel of executives. Germs have a horrible sense of timing. Last week I could have missed a day or two. Three weeks ago I could have missed an entire week. This week just doesn’t have enough days in it.

Somehow in my delirium I made it to work, though, made it through my meetings and muddled through my assignments. I just need to make it through one more day and two more meetings before I reach yet another weekend. Weekends are fleeting and fly by faster and faster each week. Right now I’m actually hoping for rain Saturday so I don’t have to drive in to Queens and play a gig. It’s an easy job, strolling around a small park for two hours, but I’d rather rest. Everything is hitting me at once this week, and I’ll be glad when it’s over. When it rains it pours, which is why I’m hoping it pours on Saturday....