This week has been a real killer. Ever since the time changed Saturday night, I feel as if I've been chasing that extra hour around like a mad woman. No matter what I do, it keeps eluding me. I'm behind on everything from laundry to literature, with no end in sight. It would happen that Daylight Savings Time would take effect on a particularly busy week, one in which there was a school concert to work around as well as an extra heavy work schedule. Business is literally booming at our office these days, and though that is of course a good thing, it means more work all down the line. I'm also in the process of training two new people for my department, which is never my favorite thing to do. They are both very lovely and competent women, but I feel horribly inadequate when I have to teach people things. Ironic, really, this aversion I have to teaching, when as a child it was the only thing I ever wanted to "be" when I grew up. One of my earliest favorite games of make- believe was playing school, and I clearly remember lining my stuffed animals up on the couch and teaching them lessons in reading and writing. (My classroom was horribly deficient in math skills, I'm afraid.)
Somehow the reality of teaching does not compare with my idyllic childhood dream of it. I admit that I'm impatient with the process, but mostly I'm insecure about myself. Although I feel perfectly capable of performing my job, and I am quite competent at it, I start to second guess myself whenever I have to teach someone else how to do it. Why do we do things this way? I'll think as I start to explain a process. Why haven't I figured out a way to do this better? And what if I'm really not as good at this as I think I am? After all, who am I to be teaching anyone anything?
Silly, I know. But it's stressing me out, as the saying goes.
That, and the dratted missing hour I keep searching for.
One thing I dearly love about Daylight Savings Time is the fact that I can sit in my living room with the blinds open and write by natural daylight at 7:43 p.m. That is very nice. It actually gives me hope that the long, long winter is on its way out and that spring will finally come again.
And hope is something I always have time for.