So if you will remember, on day 2 of NaBloPoMo, I wrote
about my Y-Axis
Crises. I got a good chunk of the
presentation done on Wednesday at work, and then a little more done at
home. Unfortunately, I had to do most of
it at work because I needed my client's chart to write the presentation, and
access to the network at work access his graphs and data. On Thursdays, I typically have a meeting from
8:30 - 9, a client from 9:30-11:30, a client from 12- 2, and the remainder of
the day free. "This will be
fine," thought I in my ridiculous naïveté, "I'll just spend 2-5
finishing up the presentation."
So in to work I go Thursday morning, look at the schedule,
and realize a colleague was sick and I was put in the 2:30-4:30 slot to cover for
her client. Brilliant. I went to morning meeting, came down to my
desk and had a phone call. I called the
person back and spent 9-9:25 on the phone, at which point I cut them off and
ran to the second floor to prep for my 9:30.
I was in session until 11:30, at which point I realized I was starving
as I had not eaten breakfast. I let that
client go, and was stopped in the hallway on my way down to my desk by a
supervisor and then 2 colleagues who needed my help. I stopped, helped, ran down to my desk, dropped
off my stuff and ran to the bathroom. I
then looked at the clock, realized it was 11:55, and ran upstairs, lunchless,
to my 12:00. 12:00 appointment was a mess and a half,
complete with a disrobing child and a 45 minute tantrum. At 2, I headed down to my office and put my
lunch in the microwave. As I sat down,
waiting the 2 minutes for my lunch to heat up, the phone rang. It was the special educator I have been
attempting to contact for 2 weeks. And,
it turned out, she really liked to talk.
I sat at my desk, attempting to sound cool calm and collected while
gathering all the necessary data and listening to my lonely lunch beep in the
microwave. At 2:18, I started getting
frantic text messages on my phone, my pager went off, and I got an email all at
the same time. My next client was taking
his pants off and screaming in the lobby.
I then heard my name over the intercom broadcast across the hospital
(first and hopefully last time THAT happens), telling me to report to the lobby
immediately. I hurriedly but politely
get the teacher off of the phone and dash out of the office to the lobby where
I find a half-naked adolescent boy lying on the floor screaming. My colleague pops out of the elevator at the
same time and we transport him up the elevator to the session room. By then it's 2:30 and time to start session,
so in I go, dreaming about my lonely lunch in the cold microwave. By 3:30 I was desperate and asked a friend to
take data for me while I ran and grabbed a granola bar from my desk. I sat in my chair for 2 minutes before
hopping back up and going back into session.
I finished up at 4:30 by transporting a- this time- fully clothed child
to his car. I retrieved my lonely lunch
from the microwave and promptly spaced out at my desk for a good 15 minutes
while I ate and attempted to recover.
So I guess you could say that put me back a tad
time-wise. Never fear! In times like these, I have a Super Power
Focusing Machine I can use to focus with unusual intensity. And I did.
For about an hour, I focused hard-core and whipped those graphs into
shape. I left no data label unentered,
no Y-axis mislabeled. I was an Excel
Goddess.
...and then, as inevitably happens, the engine on my Super
Power Focusing Machine fizzled out and died like my dad's riding lawn mower did
every time he mowed the lawn. It started
out fine, then made a couple weird noises, coughed a couple times, and slowly
sounded like it was being drawn and quartered until it stopped and fizzled out
completely, followed by a loud POP you learned to wait for. By 7:15, I had popped. I emailed the presentation to myself to
finish at home, packed it all up, caught the shuttle, sat in traffic due to an
accident in the city, and finally made it home by 8:35.
But wait! My day
doesn't end there. Nope. I could have come home and written a
complaining, whining blog post, much like this one, if it ended there. But instead, I came home, took the dog for a
walk, ate dinner, let the dog out again, and pulled out the presentation to
rearrange it, add two slides, check it over, and finish it up before
writing. An hour and a half later, I was
done. I was happy. And I wasn't even tired! I hit Control+S one more time for good
measure and closed out powerpoint to email it to myself again and save it to my
flash drive.
As soon as I hit that damn little X, I realized what I had
done and scared the crap out of the dog by yelling,
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo!"
I had opened the powerpoint from my email, but never
actually saved it anywhere. All the
times I hit Control+S, I wasn't actually saving it some place permanent. I was saving it in the no-mans land in which
opened but unsaved documents exist. And
when I closed it out, the hour and a half of work it was gone forever.
In spite of the fact that I knew it was gone, I spent 30
minutes searching for it, hoping it would turn up in some obscure corner of my
computer. Useless. So I re-opened my email, opened that original
attachment--SAVED IT!--and spent another hour re-doing what I had just done.
One would think 3 years of college + almost 5 years of grad
school would have taught me to save my work in multiple places. One could also reasonably assume that this
education taught me how to not hate Excel, and how to quickly and efficiently
deal with Y-Axis crises.
But no. I went into
psychology to work with people. People
have wrong buttons I can push, but I can tell when I'm pushing them and we can
work through the wrong button mishap.
Computers? One wrong button and
it's all over. People don't retain all
the information I give them, but they also aren't hardwired to do so. Computers are. Any button I push it's supposed to remember,
and I KNOW the information is in there.
It has to be. It just won't let
me know where. People are human--they can't read my mind, so they don't always
do what I want them to do, but we work through it. Computers on the other hand are supposed to
fix themselves and do exactly what I want when I want, regardless of whether or
not I push the right buttons. Because...well
because that's just how it's supposed to be.
And even a doctoral degree is never going to convince me otherwise.
So, by the time I took the dog out, took a shower, packed my
lunch, and brushed my teeth, it was 1:30 AM, I was not on speaking terms with
my laptop, and NaBloPoMo was the LAST thing on my mind.
(PS - The presentation was today at 12, the powerpoint was finished, and I'm pretty sure I rocked it! I hit all the major criteria: speak and have fully formed English words others can hear come from your mouth; display pretty graphs and pretend you know what they mean; use big words; remain standing and keep breathing throughout. Yep yep...I call that a success).
So why didn't you write a blog post?
ReplyDeleteI tend to write very late at night, after most people's days have ended. After midnight. So I just set the time stamp back. I don't think it's cheating really because I haven't been to bed yet. The day ends when you go to bed.