Overwhelmed

Happy Birthday, JJ! The big 4-0! Woo! As I said, it's the decade of enlightenment!

I had a little mini panic attack before work this morning. I had a meeting at 8AM and I had some stuff to do beforehand to prepare. I was also teaching at 8:30, so I didn't have any time between my meeting and class starting. Luckily, I'm the teacher, so I can start class whenever I want (ha!).

But coming out of this meeting it started to hit me all the little things that our admin assistant used to take care of that I am now responsible for doing myself. Thank goodness I'm kind of on auto-pilot with the courses I'm teaching because now there's all this new stuff to take on that I have to figure out the ins and outs of.

When I started my job I was one of five people in the "training group". We had a director responsible for strategy, three trainers (including me) and an admin assistant. Well, first we lost one of our trainers to Project Land. Then the next trainer got sucked into a massive company-wide initiative. Shortly thereafter, our director announced her retirement. So that left me and Jen to hold the fort. Lucky for me, Jen knew exactly what I needed before I even knew myself that I needed it. She was on top of everything and helped me navigate. Well, on the heels of our VP (the guy I reported to directly) being fired, Jen has also left to pursue another opportunity outside the bank.

So that leaves me: strategy, facilitation, administration, ongoing tracking of training effectiveness, etc. There just are not enough hours in the day to stay on top of everything so I am sticking my head in the proverbial sand and just doing the bare minimum to get by.

We have a meeting with our new VP tomorrow and I'm not optimistic. I've heard some not-so-nice things about her (like, she's mean), whereas other people really respect her.

I think I can stick this out until the end of October when our current training schedule wraps up, but I'll need to know before then what our strategy is going to look like for the subsequent 12 months so that I can decide if I want to stay or go (or even if they want me to stay).

Aaaargh!

I'm having dinner with my dear friend PF tomorrow night. He's just joined the bank, too, so it will be good to hear his perspective on things. I'm also having lunch with KP on Monday (another former colleague from my past life who has landed at the same bank) and she's always good for some words of wisdom.

OK, for now, I will just go swimming and look at all the nice triathlete eye candy. The nice thing about eye candy: no calories! Woo!