On having a life, Service Splash and more

It's Saturday and I'm hanging out in my apartment. This is the first Saturday in a month that I'm actually NOT working and am just hanging out doing nothing - or at least NOTHING work related.

I moved here to have more balance in my life and to actually "have a life" but that really hasn't happened. One weekend, we had the RHA Area Council Training that I basically ran since my RHA just isn't there yet - then I went to a conference with RHA, then we had Open House. Last weekend, I finally didn't have an official meeting/conference/work-related thing but I still spent the majority of the time getting ready for our big annual event. I was putting up flyers, finalizing some of the service things we'd worked on and and and. That didn't leave much time for relaxing. The thing that makes it so hard here to have balance is that, even when we work on weekends or in the evenings, we still need to be in the office Monday-Friday from 9 am-5 pm. Yeah, that's only 35 hours - which leaves 5 extra hours to work at nights an don weekends, but let's be honest: there's A LOT more time that I spend doing extra things after-hours. I have RHA meetings every week and they last about 1 1/2 hours, Area Council - 1 hour, Staff Meeting - 2 hours; there's at least one or two programs every week; on-call shifts; and and and. I just don't think it's fair that I have to take annual leave when I want to sleep in one morning after having been in meetings until midnight the day before.
I talked with my supervisor about how I'm stressed and how I feel overwhelmed with all the night-time and weekend commitments and her suggestion was that I change RHA meetings to every other week (which they already are...but I meet with Exec for the weeks in between), change Area Council to every other week (also not a good idea...I thought one of the focus areas of our department for the semester was to build up Area Council!!!!) and to stop going to programs (hmmm, what about getting to know your students, having a presence in the building???) - I'm just not okay with that. I could do those things but then I'd feel like I was not doing my job well and I don't want that. So I guess I'm stuck with being overwhelmed and stressed. :(

But this weekend, at least, it's all about relaxing and hanging out with friends. We had our big area-wide program on Wednesday (Service Splash) and it went well. At one point, we counted about 100 students - and there were a lot who came in and out...so I'm sure we had more than that. We made over 100 teddy bears for children in hospitals, collected almost 700 non-perishable food items and raised $150 for a youth center for teens who identify as LGBTQ.
The concert, of course, was a lot of fun as well. And as I mentioned, I absolutely love having people stay with me. It forces me to have more balance in my life because I can't just come back and sit on my couch and do work...and I'm a lot more cautious about agreeing to go to certain meetings or take on extra tasks.

The guys had the show at my school on Wednesday, then another one about 2 hours away from here on Thursday (I of course met up with them...I couldn't go with them because I didn't get out of work in time...and helped with selling merchandise)...yesterday they had the day off, so while I was at work (being grumpy about having to be at work - especially because I asked to get the day off but wasn't allowed to since two of my colleagues were already gone and we can never have more than two of us leave at one point), they hung out in my apartment, our pool and also worked on booking more shows for the rest of their tour and promoting their music.

Okay, back to the fact that I couldn't take Friday off - because that's still a sore spot. I get the rule that we need to have half of our professional hall director staff here so that we have enough people to respond in case of an emergency. But I just asked if I could be out of the office that day - I even explained that I'd be in town and would be willing to come back and respond to any emergencies. So why couldn't I do that??? Well, I couldn't, so I ended up sitting in my office, in a horrible mood, staring at the computer screen and getting hardly anything accomplished that day. Was that really worth it?

But anyway...

I'm off on Monday, so I'm really excited about that. :) The guys have a show today and tomorrow - but Monday they have off. So that'll be nice. And I'm just excited that I'll actually get to sleep in on Monday. ;) I'm not excited though that that's one day of my annual leave - I need to save vacation days, so I can take some time off next summer and go home to Austria for my friend's wedding - and then continue to India for another friend's wedding. Yup, it'll be a summer of weddings. :)