That was all blown to shit yesterday/Monday. I really don't know what happened since the number of forms, while extremely high, was not an amount I hadn't seen before. But it was a combination of going through all of those plus answering phones plus dealing with other weird shit plus another batch of stuff that came through in the afternoon (something, I realized, that didn't happen in any of the four days I worked last week -- a big reason, I also realized, why I left work on time last week) that I could not finish all the forms that came in before my self-imposed deadline of two extra hours of overtime only. This is the first time that has happened to me since the early days of working in The Fourth Department. Then, I was about to throw the monitors against the wall because I was so goddamned overwhelmed with figuring out just what the hell I was supposed to do to get all the information I need to get. Yesterday I knew how get all the information; I was just ... overwhelmed.
I'm kind of embarrassed that I didn't finish all the stuff that fell into my lap. I now pride myself for being able to at least touch every form that came in that day at least once, even if I have to work late. But ... shit, man, there was just a lot. Thing is, the morning couldn't have started off better. Maybe there was one answer that came in over the weekend I dealt with top of the morning, and there were very few forms I needed to work on again. I got into the new work 90 minutes into my day. I thought I would be able to get through whatever came at me because I was starting the new stuff so early. But I took a huge gulp at the pile of crap that waited for me from the weekend, and the other shit just kind of fucked me over through the rest of the day. At lunch I called Father and told him I would be home at 7, the latest I would be home if I were going straight from work to home. That was around 2:30. I usually don't know how my afternoon is going to work out at that time; for all I know, things could settle down and I could leave earlier than I feared. But I knew, based on the mountain of work I still had to tackle after lunch because of everything else I needed to deal with first, that that wasn't going to fucking happen. And goddammit, I was right.
I got so stressed and anxious and upset as 6:30 crept closer that I developed a new knot, one up against the left side of my neck, that was getting really distracting. I was scared that I wouldn't be able to clock out at 6:30 because I was balancing getting as much of the work as I could done and making sure I not only did all my end-of-day stuff but also cleaned out the Internet browsers and tidied up the workspace by 6:30. I had to cut it off with several forms left over. I needed to cut it a tad shorter than I would have because I needed to clean up because I am not working today/Tuesday. Turns out, I now realize, I don't think I did a great job of cleaning up the workspace. I did remember to apologize to my supervisor for leaving her all this work, however.
Hope she's not mad. Hope my boss isn't mad, either. I really hope he doesn't fuckin' ask me why I stayed ten hours and still couldn't get all my shit done. If he accuses me of just sloughing off ... man, I don't know what I'll do. I was working my ass off, man, really. What really pisses me off was the helplessness I felt yesterday afternoon. I thought I had overcome all my feelings of abandonment and confusion once I started "getting" The Fourth Department. But by sheer tonnage, I was back to feeling besieged. I hope I don't get that goddamn feeling again when I go back to work tomorrow/Wednesday, and I hope I don't get any blowback for the decisions I made in doing the best I could yesterday/Monday.
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