So finding time to blog is really hard. Plenty of blogworthy things have happened, I just can’t seem to find the time to write about them. Part of the reason is that I work a lot – still!
If you read this blog or are my friend, you know that I went through a pretty tough time a little over a year ago trying to figure out what I want to do. I ended up accepting a job as the parish secretary for my Church for several reasons.
1. the pay is pretty darn good considering I’m “just a secretary”.
2. I really wanted to do something that would get me more involved in my faith. The short explanation is that I joined the Catholic Church in 2005 and faith hadn’t really been a part of my life much before that. My life changed for the better in so many ways when I made that decision.
One of these days I’ll blog about that, but, honestly, I’m a little nervous about it. I guess I’m nervous because it seems that so many people have this negative idea of Christianity and/or would think I’m trying to convert them or something. Which would not be what I was doing. It’s simply one of those steps in my personal journey that I would want to write about.
I have always wanted to “write”, but I’m still trying to sort out what that means exactly and how to get there. I have a bachelor’s degree in psychology and I am really not interested in more school. I’m also not necessarily interested in “journalism”, as in writing articles for newspapers or magazines.
I’m interested in writing things that are personal to me, like about my life and things that I’ve experienced and what I’ve learned. I also have plenty of opinions on how screwed up society is and how we got there. However, I have no journalism degree or experience nor do I have enough letters after my name to be publishing books about what I think about stuff. So, what to do?
I guess I am thinking about these things today because I’m home sick, and I was sick yesterday too. So keep in mind as you read this that I am dizzy, nauseated, and slightly loopy today.
I’m sick in part because I have a chronic stomach condition and chronic fatigue syndrome and I am not managing it at all. I’m eating all the wrong foods, not exercising, not managing my stress well, blah blah blah. So it’s my own fault really.
Anyway, I am specifically thinking about why and how exactly being a church secretary can be so stressful. I can’t tell you the number of people who ask me what I do all day, as if I just sit in the little church office working on the bulletin, answering the phone, and being bored.
That is so, so wrong. I’m not going to go into all the things I do, because that would bore all of you. In an attempt to figure out what I must be doing wrong to be so stressed out at a simple secretarial job, I took my job description home this past weekend.
The first thing I noticed was that the list of tasks I do is three pages long. Then I decided to estimate the amount of time I spend doing each task, plus I added a bunch of things I do that weren’t on there. When I was done adding it all up, I’m expected to do almost 50 hours of work each week. Hmm, maybe that’s why I am never caught up.
But the sad thing about this is that I am guessing 95% of the population has this problem. Does anyone remember when a work day was 9-5, with an hour lunch included in there? I don’t, but I remember my parents and grandparents talking about it.
Now we work 8-5 generally, and how many people really take an hour for lunch? More than that, how many people actually take not one, but two, fifteen minute breaks a day? How did we become this work-obsessed society?
I can’t even imagine what it’s like for those of you that are parents. I’m really hoping I get some of this figured out before I have kids, because the thought of sitting in some lame office all day while someone else raises my kids makes me want to cry. Seriously.
