Getting Dirty

My job is turning out to be nothing as I expected.

What started as a "more than full-time, if you want it", work-from-home job has turned out to be a "not even close to full-time", work-outside-of-home job.

I've adjusted. If working outside of my home meant full-time hours, it was a small price to pay. I have looked and found the positives, in a situation I didn't want.

The ability to separate work from home is wonderful. I have absolutely nothing work-related in our home any more. I look around the house and I see no more reminders of my day care days, nor my bookkeeping-out-of-my-home days. I come home from work at the end of my day ... and I relax.

Evenings and weekends are mine. No longer am I plagued with the idea that I must make up for lost time, by working outside of the 9 - 5 day. I see a weekend as time-off ... not a time to play catch-up at work. I like this concept.

For the past month, I have had a project at work which kept me busy, challenged, focused and happy. I was working on balancing bank statements. A challenge that I enjoy. A game! I utilized my brain and it felt good to pull out that little used muscle and give it a work out. It felt wonderful to use my power of reasoning to figure out the puzzles of the numbers before me. I liked my job!

Then ... I completed that mission.

This week? Has not been one of my favorites. I have been working in the shop - labelling shelves; putting stickers on boxes (so someone else can label them?); matching tags with part numbers to the parts hanging on the walls; checking off said parts to a sheet.

I have been sitting in the grime and dirt, getting my hands dirty and frustrated because this job could have been completed in one, simple step if I had known what the game plan was at the beginning.

There is no time for anyone to sit down and tell me what to do. From beginning to end. I suppose if some one would have done that, I would have been overwhelmed and frustrated from the onset. Instead, I find the frustration in waiting for being told what to do next.

To add insult to injury, I am working in the public eye right now. I go to work dressed in my most ugly, ill fitting clothes because I don't want to ruin any clothes I actually like. I don't bother washing my hair at the onset of the day, because I come home reeking of diesel. I want to blend into those walls like the rest of the diesel parts.

I have worked with the public my entire working career. I want to shrivel up and disappear when I see customers that I cannot help. Picking up a ringing telephone scares the socks off me. The absolutely only thing I could say that could be of any help would be, "Can you hold?"

I suppose it is a hidden blessing that there is not an 8 hour day available to me this week. I am so ready to run out that door as soon as I have permission to do so, that the last thing I'm worrying about is the lack of hours that I'm working. I am only available to work 13 days this month (because of my upcoming Great Alaskan Cruise Adventure). I needed to make the most of those days.

Today is another day. When I left work yesterday, I was told that today would be 'more of the same'. And when I was done that, I would get to start entering this information in the system. Oh! How I hope I get to do that in my upstairs 'office' (working upstairs with spare diesel parts and the furnace has never sounded better).

I had become accustomed to the fact that I smelled like diesel at the end of my day. Dirt under my fingernails and grease embedded in my dried up fingers was not the accessory I was looking to go with that fragrance.