A Little Good News

Work has been a total pain in my ass lately.

Not only am I spending all my spare time preparing for Christmas in the usual harried ways, but I am also working overtime to make the house function/look decent in anticipation of our Austrian guests, who arrive in 16 days. You can imagine that I am feeling a bit stretched – I seem to fall asleep around 8:30 p.m. every evening for a short bit – especially when you take into account that I have four events to organize next week and one the week after. These aren’t cakewalk events either; they’re high-stakes.

I’ve been doing this job for just about five years. In February, it will be my anniversary. It’s the type of job that requires a good deal of energy and inspiration, both to come up with new and exciting ideas, but also to see through the administrative/financial/political things inevitably get in the way and to push through with any enthusiasm left. I have liked this job quite a lot and been proud of my accomplishments. It has afforded me many opportunities that I wouldn’t otherwise have ever had, and for that I am thankful. I have traveled. I have met really really interesting people. I have stayed in very nice hotels and eaten at top-drawer restaurants and stolen all the best hotel toiletries (I never buy soap!). I have been to Rideau Hall on a number of occasions, and have a black-tie section in my wardrobe to prove it.

Lately though, people have been getting plucky. Emails are getting ruder and ruder, things are being forgotten or overlooked, and colleagues are getting snippy or emotional. Maybe I am guilty of this as well, I can’t tell. It happens at this time every year – the year is a cycle, and we are at the end of it and all ready for vacation. We are all bone weary and like siblings stuck in the back seat of a car on a long drive, we’re starting to pick at each other. On the 19th we will have our Christmas party (excuse me – Holiday party) and everyone will sit together in their little groups and lick their wounds, and drink like fish at lunchtime, and pull the curtains and pretend it’s evening so the dance floor fills up. Everyone will then go their separate ways and heal themselves before returning for a new cycle.

So a week ago, when the Human Resources department called me up to tell me that I’d won the competition for a new position, I was beyond happy. I am ready for a change, but not so much change that I would leave the organization, and not so much change that I don’t want to have a fall-back position. I will fill a two-year term as a program officer in the Visual Arts section, which means I will manage several of the granting programs in that discipline. I get a new office, a new batch of coworkers, a new floor and even new art on the walls. I get exciting new duties and lots of contact with the arts community. I start on December 16, and will come back to my current job on March 30, 2011, unless something catastrophic happens. This is a big deal for me – I have wanted this job for a long time.

Yay to me. I am thrilled. I am trying to pack up my current office in the midst of all these events, figure out what my successor will want or need to use, and still deal with the demands of coworkers, run all of my errands and do all of my shopping in between. The house is a complete disaster but I’m saving that task for a later date. I only have two hands and 24 hours in a day.