work | Change Is Hard

May 13, 2011
by dawnkinster 13 Comments

Crumbling confidence

In my work I look at a lot of details. It’s something of a detective job, ferreting out the important stuff amid all the other irrelevant bits and pieces of a person’s financial life. There are a myriad of rules, individual situations, and innumerable combinations. And things change all the time.

For a person that likes to do my work correctly this can all be overwhelming. And while I might catch one thing on a transaction there can always be something else I didn’t see. Lately it feels like there’s an audit error coming my way every week. Sometimes more than one. I learn from each error, but the next week something totally different rears its ugly head. Trying not to miss anything causes me to slow down and miss my production goals. And the audits keep coming.

I know a large part of this is a function of being back in an industry that changed drastically while I was gone. We are totally paperless now, and that means most of the time you see only one document at a time. That in conjunction with my lack of short term memory means I am constantly going back and forth between documents. And don’t even talk about the interruptions of phone calls and emails and other employees. Usually I resort to writing stuff down just to remember it long enough to make a decision.

Still I’m making mistakes, and it’s undermining my confidence. Today I will go to work and do my best again. As I’ve told others that I’ve mentored, doing your best is the best you can do. I believe that.

But it sure is exhausting.

April 1, 2011
by dawnkinster 13 Comments

Maybe it's just the weather

Yesterday at work during my ‘lunch’ break I went for a walk. It’s the first walk I’ve done at work since winter set in. I don’t know how far I went – it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I got out of my beige cube, away from my dual computer screens and into the fresh air.

I talked to myself the entire walk, past the condos full of retired people, the elementary school with children running and squealing on the playground, the bigger homes quiet with everyone away at work and school. Past the bits of wooded areas, filled with frolicking squirrels and a flock of robins bob bob bobbing along. I reminded myself that I actually have it pretty good. That none of the things that are bothering me are anything major and really, compared to many, I have absolutely nothing to complain about. I reminded myself that you’re supposed to be able to choose to be happy and I just needed to get to getting with that.

“Happy happy happy” I repeated in my mind, in time to my steps. That’s right…I’m just happy happy happy. Darn. My knee starts to hurt. And my shoes are old and not as comfy as they should be. Wait a minute…I’m happy happy happy.

And I was, as long as I was walking AWAY from the office! Just like Katie when it came time for me to turn around and head back I was less than thrilled. If someone had me on a leash and was urging me to get back in the car to go home, I’d have sat down and refused. But I had to be the responsible adult. So I went back to the office.

Still, the little walk made the day brighter. But this morning taking Katie out I felt a little twinge in the knee. Wait a minute..I forgot.

I’m happy happy happy.

March 17, 2011
by dawnkinster 16 Comments

Too busy to know

I’m feeling disconnected. I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t had time to post or even read very much. Katie and I had school Monday night, I played in a concert Tuesday night and I worked late last night. I still haven’t caught up with that lost hour of last weekend’s daylight savings time adjustment. Here it is after 8 and I’ve just sat down for the evening. Where is the time going?

So. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Let’s start with Katie and school. This week was our second week in the correct, ‘Novice Motivation’ class. In last week’s class I felt like we were a bother for the instructor who clearly didn’t remember we used to come all the time. Because Katie wasn’t up to the instructor’s expectations with heeling we were pretty much ignored. A lot of eye rolling went with the ignoring. About the only thing she said to me was “you’re a nice Mom.” And she didn’t mean it as a compliment. Even though Katie did a perfect recall and was perfect at her sits and downs she would hide behind me every time the instructor with her loud voice came near. I felt terrible.

This week Katie and I practiced during the week, her Dad didn’t feed her just before class, and she was less afraid of the big noisy building. And I was more diligent with my corrections when she wandered. So Katie gave me a bit more attention, though not much more than the week before. And on her long sit she laid down. Twice. So when we did the long down I made her sit. She was not happy with me. “All the other dogs get to lay down MOM!!!” Her recall is still good. I felt a bit better by the end of the class. We haven’t practiced heeling this week at all. I have too much going on and I need to make time for practice this weekend or I’ll be miserable at school again on Monday night. It’s so hard to get there by 6:30 when I work an hour south of here and class is 30 minutes north of here and I have to swing by and pick up the dog. OK enough whining.

Tuesday night we played a concert with the 7th graders again. I didn’t have time to practice since our last concert, but it went OK. Personally I think we played too long for those 200 7th graders to sit still. But we DID have a captive full house audience!

Tuesday and Wednesday were really terrible at work. I can’t talk about it but suffice it to say that if I could retire right now I’d be gone. Again. I hope it’s just a bad string of days and not the way it’s going to be into the future. I’m very very tired. OK. Enough whining now.

So maybe it’s just as well I’ve been too busy to hang out here. Because I don’t feel like I’m very good company. Katie’s barking. Again. She barked for an hour last night at 2:00 a.m. We finally put her in her crate. It was heaven to sleep without her. Could be I’m a slow learner and she should be there every night. We’ll see.

OH! And I forgot the whole point of this post was supposed to be that I’m too busy to notice stuff. It took me almost all day to realize why so many people were wearing green today. I guess I’ve been too busy to realize the month of March was…well..(forgive me!)… marching on. Here we are at St. Patty’s and I didn’t even know it.

I don’t suppose wearing green tomorrow would be the same.

November 20, 2010
by dawnkinster 11 Comments

Going to work

I had to smile this week at Sara’s Wordless Wednesday (scroll down to Wednesday) photo of her desk at work. Mine used to look like that – back in the days of paper.

Come along and I’ll take you to my desk! First the commute; about 40 minutes depending on the traffic.

And the sun.

We have what the newscasters laughingly call the “Detroit Squint” most mornings. At different times during the year we’re driving almost directly into the rising sun.

Certainly slows the commute.

After a colorful drive to work I arrive at my cubicle. Not so colorful. And this truly is the way it looks. I didn’t clean up for the photo or anything! We do all our work paperlessly. Is that a word?