Boy is it tough at work these days. A good tough in a way, but just tough overall.

I went from being the lowest ranking person in my office and one of the lowest in the building/command to suddenly being the third-highest in my office and still fairly low around the building/command.

I am suddenly supposed to go from being not allowed to tell anyone to do anything, including even asking unless somehow I perceive correctly that they are in the mood to be asked very respectfully -- to being the one who has to somehow convince almost everyone in my office that they want to do the things we have to do, and that they need to do them correctly. I go from being completely out of the loop to now when I'm supposed to initiate, track, and close the loop. I go from being trained to training everyone.

In a good tough way, I said above, because I can hope that it will make me an unbeatable supervisor whether I stay in or finish out my current contract and depart. It can, I hope, reflect well on me for the remainder of my military career, whether that is 3 and a half years or 18 and a half.

It sure is tough, though. I never did quite get caught up from drowning and being overwhelmed in the fall. I'm just not cut out for this type of pay office -- but then, is anyone? There's a part of me that wants to take it as a compliment that they apparently think that I can handle all of this -- and then the bigger part of me that says "what the snot are you thinking?!? Can you stop thinking so highly of me for a moment so that I can get some ME time and some of the benefits I'm supposed to get from the military?" Not that they're stopping me in the slightest -- overall, they're trying to encourage me as much as possible. Unfortunately, that's just.. well, difficult to do for someone like me.

Anyway, there is great news: I got a laptop! And it's got WiFi and I live in a neighborhood with coffeeshops and such out the wazoo so that I can connect a lot more conveniently. Yay!!!

Before you get too excited, though, keep in mind this isn't an instant "hey, I can get online all the time now" kinda thing. I still get sick of computers after using them at work all day, though it is nice to be able to use them for Me stuff instead of work, too. And I still have a lot going on in my life (in a completely nothing-to-be-envious-of kinda way) and stuff. But I do intend to blog much more often prolly.

And no, I have no intention of getting on MySpace. In fact, I plan to continue avoiding it overall just as much as I ever have -- like the stinkin' plague. However, I will be able to catch a couple of local event update sites that I've been sadly missing over the past few months since I heard of them.

Meanwhile, I'm off to a Justin McRoberts concert tonight once I finish my laundry at least mostly, and then tomorrow it's back to the grinder and I hopefully will make it through the day just fine.

Please pray for me. Really, I keep feeling like such a turdhead -- everything else in my personal, Jacksonville life is fine enough right now, but work really blows me away every day because every night I forget why it's so draining and I try to figure out what part of my attitude is making it worse and I can't remember why I get so exhausted... And then I go to work the next day with a great attitude in the morning and thing after thing happens and I feel like I've been run over every single workday since maybe September 8th or so.

Like I said, though, things are decent outside of work -- I still completely love my place and I've been putting in lots of time in the garden (and boy are my arms tired!) and I love my local friends and my local hangouts and I miss my Lynchburgers and my various other friends (which would be all of you, unless of course some local friends or shipmates have stumbled across this site -- I don't advertise it locally) and I really hope to be able to visit DC in early April, by the way.

Barbara, Bernard, Tracy, Beth and Ron, et al: Hope to see you then!

Everyone else -- soon. I need to start a regular rotation of travel and visiting various groups.

Hey, how crazy would it be of me to drop a leave chit for Cornerstone Festival, Illinois this year? And who would be there? Let me know in whatever contact format you have for me -- if enough dearly beloveds will be there, I might just get crazy enough to try to make it work.

Love ya'll!