Too Big?

When I worked at a hospital several years ago as a medical transcriptionist, there were 11 day shift transcriptionists and we typed the day away.  I was doing emergency department reports all the time and would probably do 10-12 an hour at least.   Everyone else was typing History and Physical reports, operative notes, progress notes, radiology reports, etc.  We were very productive.  On some of the reports, we were requested to send carbon copies to the patient's primary care physician, referring physician and all of the other consultants.  As a result, those printers never stopped.  There were 4 of them and they were spitting out piles of paper all day long.  There was 1 clerk whose job it was to take all the papers off all the printers, sort them, put some of them in physician's boxes that were right there in the department, fax some to doctor's offices, take some of them to the emergency department and radiology and surgery and to the catherization lab and file some of them.  She also had to keep the printers filled with paper and working.  I worked there for about 4 years and we had 3 clerks during that time.  The person who was the clerk never got to sit down, rarely got to go to the bathroom, almost always worked through her lunch and kept moving the whole time.  None of them could convince the supervisor and the other powers that be, that she needed an assistant, a helper of some kind, a co-clerk, basically just some HELP.  As a result, all of the clerks would keep doing it as best they could while frantically applying for different jobs and none of them lasted very long.  The job had just grown too big.

I think some of us are in that very same place as moms, daughters, wives, employees - sometimes it seems like this job is just too big and no one should be expected to do it all.  We need assistants or at least assistance.  We need to figure out which things we need to say no to and figure out how to do that without feeling guilty and ask for help when it is appropriate and we need to be able to concentrate on what we are doing without worrying about the next thing and take time to enjoy life a little bit.   I think this is especially hard during certain seasons of life, when your kids are all little and when your kids are all launching and your parents are aging.   There have been a couple of good articles about being present in your life that apply to us all, I think.  Here's one.  Here is another one. I am not perfect in this by any stretch of the imagination and when things get really bad for me, I tend to use technology as a way to escape.  For example after my Dad passed away I spent a lot of time Netflixing  TV shows like NCIS and CSI while simultaneously playing the The Sims 2.  Whatever works, I guess.  I'm also very blessed to have family members who will take up some slack for me whenever I am especially stressed, like my husband going to the grocery for me and the kids cooking and baking during my recent illness.

This picture is from last November, but that's pretty much what it looks like today too.  Wet.