Tuesday, March 21, 2006

More responsibility!

Excitement! Terror! Confusion!

In the past day and a half I've been handed a whole bunch of stuff to do. Most of it formatting, not much of it requiring huge amounts of thought. It's stuff I like to do, but not stuff that challenges me. The challenge comes in when I have to juggle multiple deadlines and multiple managers with entirely different ideas of what my priorities should be. The joys of assisting a department rather than a person...

Anywho, just now I've been handed another project. It will only require about 2 hours of my time a week, so it's not huge in terms of fitting it in with what I'm already doing. The intimidating part is that it's important! It's not just formatting a resume or report for someone, or making sure that they have food and room for a meeting. No! I am now responsible for updating the spreadsheet that tells everyone what the status of the projects one of the departments is working on. This is a job that usually falls to a Project Coordinator, and yet me! The lowly Admin Assistant has been given this. I get to talk to the manager in charge of the practice, and go from there. It's mine to run with; I own it.

Gah!

I know that I can do this. In fact, one of the things that's had me dissatisfied in this job is the lack of responsibility I have. So on the one hand, I'm very excited about this. On the other hand I'm terrified because the scope of most of my projects is much, much less than this. Like ordering business cards for people. So I'm also terrified, because I've been doing stuff that a potted plant could do for most of the past year and my running-things skills are out of practice. I'm also confused. I've been looking for a new job. I'm very, very tired of driving for 3 hours a day, and this job has been getting to the point where it's just not worth it anymore. But. What if this is the start of something? What happens if I decide I *like* my job? Oy.

Deep down I know those are rhetorical questions. I doubt that I will ever love what I do here enough for it to be worth the drive, and the exhaustion, disconnection and lack of personal time that goes along with it. Still, I'm hoping that I'll stop dreading getting up in the morning while I look for something else.

On a completely random and unrelated note, I use exclamation marks in my titles. A lot!

4 comments:

CosmicAvatar said...

I'm confident you'll be able to take this on - may it give you an enjoyable challenge!

Dogeared said...

I'm sure you'll be able to do it fine. Hell I'm doing the work of a potted plant's STAND IN half the time (bit of post and answering the phone) and I'm now inputting work hours onto SAP and stuff - the exact same job the actual wages clerk is doing! (and I'm on a temp wage which is a HELL of a lot less than her salary!)

So if I can pick it up and start whizzing through it, you can definitely do this new task - seriously!

Yonners said...

I think you can do it and I am a very smart kitty. Besides, people who let so many kitties own them are inherently good. My pet sometimes has to turn to me for support. I lie ontop of her textbook when she is tired and attack her fingers when she should take a break from typing. And when I decide she needs to get back to work I bite her. Hi to Sabre, Callie, and Nova!

Anonymous said...

I work with you AND love you, and know that you can do anything you put your mind to :-)

*squish*