Away from home

 

Last week was extremely busy. Monday and Tuesday were pretty normal, but I got up at 05:00 on Tuesday and drove over Southampton way for an all day meeting. When the meeting was finished I had just enough energy to make my way to get some supper and head for the hotel.

Once at the hotel I discovered - yikes - that there was no wifi in my room - or any signal. I can just about get over no signal because there is not much a hotel can do about that, but it's utterly unacceptable not to have wifi in this day and age. Especially as I was there for the rest of the week.

Too tired to do anything about it I was about to get ready for bed and plugged my mobile in to recharge. Only to discover that my charger had got damaged during the day. There was literally no way I could make it through 3 days without a phone charger. 

By now it was about 21:00 and I was barely standing. I did a google to find out where the nearest 24 hour supermarket was, plugged in the address and head off. I finally got back to the hotel around 22:00 got into my pj's and tumbled into bed.

For my first meeting on Thursday I decided to head of an hour before - it was only 6 miles and I felt this would give me plenty of time to read through my notes so I could start prepared and rested. The only problem was there had been a massive crash on the motorway. As a result all traffic was being diverted 'in-land'. The whole of the area was at gridlock. In the end it's a good thing I allowed an hour for my journey because that's how long it took! I literally arrived bang on time, exhausted, unprepared and quite stressed. 

Fortunately everybody else was in the same position and as a result I did have time to prepare, whilst I waited for those that hadn't given their journey 50 minutes spare.

As soon as that meeting finished I was back in the car and heading to another location for the next meeting. I was running a training session for a day and a half as part of our team meeting. It wasn't supposed to be me, but a colleague, but they let me know on Tuesday they were too sick to travel and run a session.

As the session they were running was on a topic they had devised, that gave me a grand total of 25 minutes to prepare a different topic. Before I had headed off I'd rushed up to the attic to see what I could find. For me it is essential that team meetings are purposeful and there were people travelling around the country to be there. I managed to find a training session I'd delivered in my last job - on a topic I knew would be really useful. So I had grabbed the notes before I set off.

The afternoon session went well, with me helping people to self-analyse to drive their own personal success and then that was the end of the second day of my trip.

I had a lovely evening - I met up with an old colleague and they gave me a historic tour of Gosport, really interesting and also interesting to see the Portsmouth dockyards from the other side of the water. Also I'd had millions of Teams chats with this person and they work from home. They asked if I'd like to see their flat as I'd 'seen' it so many times. I leapt at the opportunity. It was very strange seeing where they work - sort of walking into a film set.

By 21:00 I had started to yawn so they kindly took me back to my hotel so I could sleep.

We started early on the Friday morning to allow people time to travel home. I was absolutely on my knees. The colleague who was due to run the session was now better and so was attending the session by Teams. Though they didn't really. 

At several points during the session they forgot to turn their mike off an we had the pleasure of listening to them chat to their other half about invoices. Then at another point they started ranting about something completely unrelated to the session because they'd not been listening and made assumptions about the conversation. Oh yes, and then there was the time they threatened me with HR about something that happened 2 years ago and wasn't my fault, and on top of that accusing me of thinking something I didn't.

I really struggle with this team member, they are very good at their job, but so fixed in their ways. You could spend 100 hours (and I have) trying to explain why things can't be exactly as they want them to be, why there are more things to consider. Then after that 100 hours they haven't bent from their original approach. That and their aggression at times is waring. 

I find it extremely depressing and know I need to do something about it, but I don't have the energy. I may just leave to get away from them - but I'm stubborn enough not to do that. But it is exhausing. It would be easier if it was constant, but things will tick along fine for a month and a half and then you get hit by another curve ball.

So by the time I finished on Friday I was on my knees. Traffic home was terrible, I need to drive through Chichester and there are so many roadworks there at the moment. So even leaving at 16:00 it was a 3.5 hour journey home.

On arriving home, lovely husband had ordered a takeaway so I could just relax - and I'm not going to lie I hit the Prosecco. I woke on Saturday feeling like hell and blamed the previous nights Prosecco. As they day went on I didn't feel better. We had friends over in the evening and I was holding a birthday part for them. With little energy I prepared in dribs and drabs across the day.  Needless to say I had nothing to drink that evening.

On Sunday I woke up feeling exactly the same - if not worse. So Sunday was a quiet day. 

Then along came Monday - still no better. So I spent the day curled up and sleeping mainly.

It seems that every time I leave home I pick up some sort of lurgy. I guess this is the downside of not getting out much! I'm beginning to wonder if I'm suffering from burn out.