Like eating a stick of butter

Every weekend for the past 4 I have said no more bakery (the famous around town bakery Sweet Mandy B's).  No more of the two chocolate chip cookies with the giant blob of vanilla buttercream frosting in between.  No more lemon cupcakes.  No more unless someone comes into town to visit me and then I might make a teeny exception.

I am trying to lose 10 pounds.  For all of you who know me in real life or who have seen me in person, please don't bother telling me that I don't need to lose 10 pounds and blah blah whatever.  I have pants that don't fit anymore and I want them to fit.  Especially before summer.  I think the reason I gained a little weight (we are talking like 10 pounds) is not actually from meds but because I didn't walk at all.  I used to walk to and from work on nice weather days and I didn't walk for the past year because I was in so much pain with my foot.

Now that my foot is fixed, I can walk again as soon as it warms up.  It's a good walk - 2 miles each way.  I miss walking.

So to diet I have cut out skinny cow ice cream sandwiches as dessert every day, a skim latte and vanilla bean scones in the afternoon, and switched to oatmeal because it is lower calorie than what I was eating for breakfast.  I am going to snack on fruit.

Yeah I know I am crazy.  You don't need to say it.

So, after today, no more bakery until May 1.  Every weekend for the past 4 I have been to the bakery.  And I swear that one of those cookies ruins a diet for the entire week.  It has to be like eating a stick of butter, at least.  So no more.  I swear.

The best thing about going to bed at 7:15

Last night I accidentally fell asleep at 7:15.  It was a total accident.  The thing is, the meds I take, well one of them keeps me up all night, so I have to take some stuff to balance that out.  Usually it takes 2 plus hours to kick in, but then on a rare occasion it knocks me out in 15 minutes.  It is completely unpredictable.  I have no way of knowing which way it is going to go.  Except perhaps when I am already tired maybe I fall asleep a little quicker.

At 7:15 I closed my eyes and woke up at 8:45 not too sure what had happened.  So I went to bed.  The best part is waking up at midnight and thinking YES! I still have another 7.5 hours of sleep to get (well, depending on when you set your alarm for).

Anyway, I slept 12 hours.  It was awesome.

A sudden fear of falling

Ever since I started climbing, I never had a fear of falling.  I have no fear of heights.  I have no problem climbing 4 or 5 stories and then dangling there.  You are totally safe, harnessed, tied to the end of a rope.  You aren't going anywhere, even if you do fall.  You only fall as far as the rope stretches plus the slack in the rope.  I like my belayer to keep the rope tight so that when I do fall, I don't fall very far, if at all.  Some people like more slack in the rope so they can move around more.  Well.  I really like the instructor who works at the climbing wall on Tuesday nights and that is why I am always trying to sneak out of work early.  He works 4:30 to 6:30 so I have to go on the early side.  After observing my climbing on Tuesday, his advice was that I need to push myself harder and fall off the wall.  Well, so much for not being afraid to fall.  All of a sudden, I had a fear of falling which totally caught me off guard.  I usually come down off the wall at the point where I just know I can't go any farther because my arms are tired so I don't try.  His advice for improving my climbing is to take the risk and fall.  Climb until you literally fall off the wall.  Well, he doesn't keep the rope very tight so falling kind of means falling.

 

Tuesday, there I was dangling off the wall, unable to hold on for much longer, begging for him to lower me down, and he basically refused to.  Not basically, he flat out refused to.  Now I don't know if that should make me mad or what.  I haven't decided.  He refused to pull the rope tight and let me down.  He basically made me fall first.  I had no choice because the only way off the wall was to let go and letting go meant falling because the rope wasn't tight. 

 

Now I don't know if this cured my sudden fear of falling, or made it worse.  We'll see on Tuesday.

Until I couldn't climb any higher

Finally, I made it to climbing wall today after work.  Despite the insanity, I snuck out early (why do I even say sneak, I left early) and climbed for two hours.  It was awesome, except for the part where I sucked, but it was awesome.  I had forgotten how much I love it and missed it.  For two hours, I forgot that I was stressed, I forgot I even have a job, I forgot about everything.  Everything but the next move.  And it was awesome.  The mental break was awesome.

Stingy

This is not going to become a series of posts where I complain about my job because, well, I don't like to talk much about my work on this blog.  It's just lately it's consuming me.  I am not used to having someone peeking over my shoulder wondering (or for all I know checking) how many hours I am billing.  I've just never been in this situation before where the partner selfishly wants me to do something that I am not interested in doing but I am sort of having to try anyway.

The partner has told me not to delegate anything, and to keep every last .1 of an hour to myself.  Don't give anything away, which obviously means I get no help.  I have the workload of 3 people right now, deadlines on top of me, a partner breathing down my neck (again, for selfish reasons) and I am not supposed to pass my work down?  Why?  If he can keep me billable 10 hours a day even while I am giving work away, then why can't I give it away?

Because he expects me to work like him, which means like 15 hour days and that I am just simply not willing to do.  I have this calculated right down to the .1 of an hour and I am barely making it.  Barely billing enough to squeak by.  And, I'm doing this and I don't even want to.

I can't do this.  Today I delegated two projects without telling him.  And maybe he will get the bill and question me about it but I don't care.  I can't do this.  I'm just incapable of it.  I used to be able to work like this, on autopilot for 15 hour days, day after day and weekend after weekend.  Well I can't do it anymore.  I can't motivate myself to do this.  I have so many things to do and I am so far behind and I simply can't do it.

There is no incentive for me to do this to myself.  But that's another post.

No right to complain about it

Sorry I haven't been posting.  There just isn't anything to say.  I'm not in a good mood so why post if I am just going to complain.  I am undecided about the work hours thing so I am billing as if I am sort of trying to catch up, whatever that means.  I have no right really to complain about, you know, doing the job I get paid to do, but I am going to anyway.  I am angry because I worked today and the office was closed.  I kind of got screwed into it which is part of what pissed me off.  Then, after getting screwed into it, I made it well known that I had to leave at a certain time.  Well I didn't get the document back that I needed until 2:30 so leaving at my designated time went out the window.  It pisses me off that other people are bad at managing their time and it completely affects and sometimes ruins my schedule.  And it pisses me off when people leave things until the last minute because I am not a last minute person.  I am very much on top of things in advance.  I don't wait until the last possible second to do things.  Because I don't want to stay at work all night to get something done, I don't wait until the last minute.  A Monday due date does not mean 11:59 pm to me.  That's just not how I operate.  So anyway, I got stuck there and got very angry about it.  And that's why I shouldn't be posting, because I am pissed and I can't help but complain about it.

I didn't bill it

I didn't bother billing the 3.1.

3.1

I hate that this is all a numbers game.  3.1 is what I would have to bill this weekend to "be on track" for making up the hours by April 30th.  Seriously, is he kidding?  The thing is, life is short and in the scheme of things, it doesn't matter if I work my ass off for the next 4 months to bill these hours.  I just don't want to do it.  I want to go climbing after work and have some down time.  We had slow months where I had almost nothing to do.  That's why my hours are what they are.  It's not because I was lazy, or didn't try or didn't work.  Working the way he wants me to work is not sustainable for 4 months.  I could do it for maybe 2 tops.  But not 4.  I guess I could have one really late night a week - then maybe I could do it?  Who knows.  I can't decide.

My best half-assed try

I am torn.  It's that time of year when you either decide to go for your hours or decide not to go for your hours.  It's close enough to the end of the year where you can easily calculate possible outcomes and make a decision about which way to go.  I realize that it's a requirement of my job that I bill 2000 hours, that is what we are supposed to bill in a year, but not everyone does so, some people never do and given the current state of the economy, it may not even be possible for a lot of people this year.  All the more reason to go for it??  Nah.  But, I happen to be one of those people who has done if before, so the expectation seems to be a bit different.

 

The partner that I work for is putting an incredible amount of pressure on me to hit my hours and I am behind where I should be for this time of year (because duh, we had some slow months) and it requires me to make up what I think is a lot of time.  He's not just pressuring me to do it, he is almost telling me I have to.  Which he can't exactly force me, but it sort of feels like he is trying to.  He seems rather excited about it and I am, well, rather not excited to say the very least.  Although he is one of the nicest people I have ever met and really laid back, we do not share quite the same philosophy about work.  Not at all.  I don't stay at work until midnight for anything and I definitely don't pull all nighters.  Never have. Never want to.  Never will.

 

He is trying to motivate me to hit hours with the money and that is simply not going to motivate me.  I would be just fine coasting for the next 20 years at my current salary and level of responsibility.  I don't exactly want to sign up for any more responsibility, but that's another conversation.  Anyway, in the conversation that we had about my hours, he kept saying but then you don't have to worry about your raise, and you don't have to worry about your bonus.  Um, I wasn't worried.  Because uh, I don't care anymore.  I stopped caring about the money a while ago. 

 

But then he said, and I realized he is trying to get me to do this for purely selfish reasons, he told me if I hit 2000 hours then he doesn't have to answer any questions about why he couldn't keep me busy enough.  So this is actually about him, not me and my future.  Because the fact is, and I don't mean to sound like I am great or anything, but I am pretty hard to replace.  Even if I don't hit my hours I am not going to lose my job.

 

We aren't talking like I am going to come in way under 2000, we are talking like I would come in somewhere between 1900 and 1950 with maybe a medium amount of extra effort.  So then the question is, how hard do I try?  What if trying a little harder gets me to 1950?  Then why not go for it.  Why not find the extra 50 hours?  Because the reality is, it's impossible for me to catch all the way back up.  I could try pretty damn hard and I'll come in right around 1975.  And that is probably what will happen.  I'll bust my ass for 4 months and come up short anyway.  And I can't not mention the fact that I have had to do more business development and non-billable work this year than any other year in the past. 

 

Basically, to hit 2000 hours I have to bill 10.4 hours per work day for the next 4 months and that accounts for taking 5 days off in the next 4 months.  It's not easy to bill 10.4 hours per day.  It's just not.  I would have to have no down time at all, no wasted time between projects.  It's just not as easy as it sounds.  We are talking billable time, not time actually worked.  He actually suggested that I work on Saturdays to accomplish this feat and to that I flat out said no.  I simply refuse to work 6 days a week for 4 months straight for a raise that I am no longer even guaranteed to get.  That's the thing - they completely changed our compensation policy so my raise isn't even guaranteed anyway. 

 

So what should I do?  Should I force myself to do it?  Because if I am going to, I need to decide like now.  Should I not bother trying and just coast?  Give it my best half-assed try which would hopefully maintain my sanity?  I can't decide.  I admit, it would be disappointing to come in between 1950 and 2000 but I just don't think I am willing to give up what I would give up (in terms of my sanity and mental health) to hit 2000.  I just can't see myself doing it.