Category Archives: Work

Email Management – What I’ve Learned

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Well, it’s July 9th. The process of getting throughout almost 18,000 emails has been an experience.  I don’t have my inbox down to zero, but I have learned a lot…

  • I don’t need to save every email.  I don’t record every conversation I have in person, why would I need a record of every email conversation.
  • When an email comes in I must decide quickly if it needs to be filed or if it is just informational.  I work in an environment where we document, document, document.  That being said, not every email needs to be saved for documentation sake.  Some emails are purely informational.
  • When I can I will be picking up the phone or going to find the person who sent me the email on campus. It will save a lot of email back-and-forth and nothing replaces personal connection. I will feel like I know more about the situation and, more importantly, the person who sent the email.  Bonus:  I imagine that it will make folks at school feel like I am more accessible as well.
  • I will not respond to every email. Not every email needs a response. Sometimes responding makes the other person feel like he has to respond and all of the sudden you have five emails in your inbox that don’t mean anything at all.
  • When possible I will only be touching an email once – immediately file or delete.
  • I’ll be blocking off an hour a week to spend on email. Things can’t always be dealt with immediately. There are times I have to wait on answers and I have to wait for situations to be resolved, but if I set aside time each week to go back and revisit then I will be able to better stay on top of things.

I’d love to get through the last 574 emails that remain in my inbox, but 574 is 17,476 fewer than 18,000 .  That’s a much more reasonable inbox.

Back to the Grind – I just don’t want to be ground up

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The 2012-2013 school year officially begins for me tomorrow morning, although the kids don’t come back until late August.  I have more things to get done than I care to think about.  It will all get done – it always does, but I am nervous about this school year in a way that I have never been before.

This time last year I started back to school with a smile on my face and a spring in my step.  I was more ready to begin the school year than I had ever been before.  I got so much done over the summer and was super pumped for a great year to begin.

What began was the worst year of my professional life.  I can’t go into a lot of any details, but it involved Facebook posts by students and anonymous letters from faculty.  It wasn’t over one issue, but over multiple things that occurred throughout the school year.  If the attacks had been about me professionally I would {most likely} have been able to let those go pretty quickly, but the attacks were personal – about who I am as a person, as a mother, about littleman.

For the first time since my first year of teaching (way back in 1996) I have second guessed my career choice.  I am a super strong woman and it takes a lot to shake me, but the 2011-2012 school year shook me to my core and, quite honestly, I’m still shaking.

This year has to be better than last.  Students have graduated.  Faculty has {hopefully} moved on.  Still I am wary.

I keep reminding myself that I am on the other side of what I pray is the worst I ever have to deal with professionally.  I made it through.  I know lesser women wouldn’t have.

Tomorrow I have to get up and put my big girl panties on and move forward.  Tomorrow is a new start.  This year is going to be a year of Fun & Adventure, right?

I am moving forward with a {tentative} smile, my faith in God and a little MTM (Mary Tyler Moore) inspiration.

You re Gonna Make it After All ... 11x14 motivationally speaking screen print by elloh ... magenta ink version

{source}

Email Management – The Process

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When you have as many emails to get through as I do there isn’t one process you use.  There are so many emails and I have such a short attention span, I have to mix it up.

I have sorted by date and started back in 2009.  I then switched it up and sorted by “subject” and then sorted by “from” and then alternate between the three.

I have been working on both my iPad and the desktop.  I delete a bunch on my iPad and then come to the desktop to delete the deleted items folder.  Then I usually stay on the desktop for a bit where I can easily preview the message.  On the iPad I have to go solely based on the subject line unless I want to open each message.

Switching up the device and the sorting system has helped keep me focused.  It may not be the most organized way to approach it, but it works for me.

Current count: 4,027

I have made major progress, but I have gotten through the easy ones.  Now I am down to the ones that require some type of action other than just deleting.

God Bless the Stay-at-Home Mom

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Tropical Storm Debby has thwarted our plans for the week.  We had to leave the beach house and head to my grandmother’s home due to flooding.  I definitely didn’t plan on this.

I didn’t pack one. single. toy.  I was sure we would be spending all morning at the beach, then heading back to the house for lunch and a nap and then finding things to keep up occupied every afternoon.  Littleman loves to be outside.  He always chooses to be outside playing with nature over being inside playing with toys.  I know this and figured that it wouldn’t be worth the bother packing toys.  My mistake.  I never imagined that we wouldn’t be able to get outside for days at a time.

Now what the hell am I supposed to do?

I am not prepared for this.  I work.  I don’t stay at home with littleman.  I don’t have any tricks up my sleeve.  I don’t pin these types of things on Pinterest because generally if littleman can’t go outside due to weather that is usually not a problem I have to solve.  This is his teacher’s issue.  If it does happen that we are stuck in the house for a weekend, we are at home surrounded with all kinds of things to do.  We can invite friends over.  I may not have a great yard, but I have a great house for playing inside.  We bake cookies.  We find something to do around town that takes place inside.  We live in a metropolitan area and there are plenty of options.  Not to mention he has all his toys.  It is only for a weekend we are stuck inside.  We will both be back at school on Monday.

This week we’ve been doing the best we can.

We’ve already done the one thing that I remember a friend of mine’s mom did with us when we were little – we made homemade play dough. Thank God I have a smartphone with an unlimited data plan. Thank God there was one place in the beach house I got service. At home littleman can play with play dough for hours. This week he has only wanted to do it for about ten minutes. That’s right folks, 1-0 minutes. Next…

Because my grandmother lives in a small town she is in an area that has an Imagination Library program, which means littleman gets a brand new book each month. My grandmother keeps the books at her house for him because she thinks we already have enough books at our house. I don’t think you can ever have too many books, but my grandmother is wise.  Boy, have those books ever come in handy.

The evacuation this morning gave littleman some entertainment.  He watched me from the screen door as I loaded the car in ankle deep water.  He loved hearing about how I waded through knee deep water to the backyard to turn off the gas tank.  Seeing the beach house surrounded by a lake was a huge topic of conversation for a while, but didn’t last after we actually got out of town and honestly I was not much up for talking about it.  I was just glad we made it out safely.

So now we are at the other house, same situation.

Littleman didn’t get a nap today.  I can count on two hands the number of times he has missed a nap, but what did he have to be tired from?  I let him “rest” on the couch while watching PBS.

By late afternoon we were both going nuts and we were both on the verge of melt-downs.  I begged my grandmother to let me go to the grocery store for her.  We had to get out of this house.

I drove slowly to the store and meandered around the store several times even though all we needed was bread and milk.  I drove slowly home.  I was in no rush to get back to the house.

We got back, had dinner and littleman was asleep by 8, but it didn’t happen without taking a toll on both of us.

All I have been able to think is, “Thank God I don’t do this all the time.”

I have never thought that stay-at-home moms have it easy.  Yes, there are mornings where I would love to not have to have us both ready and out of the house by 7:15 a.m.  Sure, I get jealous of my stay-at-home mom friends laid back schedule from time to time, but I know that I couldn’t do it day-after-day.  It isn’t who I am.  I am a better mom because I work.  I know that and am not ashamed to say it.  This week is defintiely a I’ve-walked-a-mile-in-your-shoes-and-am-ready-to-return-them reminder of that.

God bless all you stay-at-home moms.  Y’all are much better souls than me.

Thick Skin

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At the conference last week one of the speakers said, “Do you know what thick skin is?  Scar tissue.”

Wow!  That one hit me like a ton of bricks.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized how true that is.

Every scar has a story.  Every story has helped me develop into the person I am today.

thick skin = scar tissue

This has completely changed my outlook on being thick-skinned.  I always thought of being thick-skinned as a negative thing.  I have felt that this made other people feel I was cold and heartless, yet I know that I’ve had to have thick skin to survive.

Being thick-skinned means that I not only have life experience, but that I have survived and thrived despite the negative experiences I have had.  That I am proud of.

Working Vacation?

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I am taking a break from packing the car for vacation.  I have already spent about an hour at work tying up some loose ends and collecting things that I need to take with me to work on while I am gone.

Why is it that I feel like I can get a month’s worth of work done while I am on vacation?  I know that I won’t get to even a portion of it, if any at all, done yet I just feel compelled to take stuff with me.  I do this every summer and think to myself, “Maybe next summer I will just leave it all here.”  Maybe next summer…

But now I have got to get a shower, finish packing and get on the road.  Littleman is just hours away and I can’t wait to see him.

Do Over

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I love being in the school business because a do over is always around the corner. I get a do over at the beginning of each school year, but also get a do over at the beginning of

  • a new term
  • a new calendar year
  • another new term
  • summer

That is four more do overs each year than the average person gets and, Lord knows, I need each one of them.

This school year has been a tough one sucked. (I know that as an administrator in a Catholic school I am not supposed to use that word, but no other word sums it up quite as succinctly.) In my fifteen years in education I have to say that professionally this year has been the worst. Just when I thought the most terrible thing that could happen had happened, I got smacked in the face with something worse. This happened repeatedly through to the very end.

Although there are a few more loose ends (and unfortunately pretty long ones) that need to be tied up – or cut off, summer is here. The students and faculty are gone and those of us who are 12 months will continue to plod through. Thankfully we have shorter hours and can dress more casually. I’ll take what I can get.

It is definitely time for a do over and I can’t wait to get started.

Working for a Bigger Purpose

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This weekend I read a post, Working for a Bigger Purpose, on Michael Hyatt’s website.

If you don’t have the time to go read the whole post, the gist of it is this: “Our bigger purpose can be found in the here and now, in the jobs we have, right under our noses. And when we find and live this purpose, it will provide the ultimate fuel for a meaningful life.”  In other words, we don’t have to cure cancer or move thousands of miles away to a less fortunate part of the world to make a difference.

The question at the end of the post was:  What is the bigger purpose for which you are working?

I don’t always comment on posts, but I felt compelled to comment on this post and want to share my comment with you here.

I have reached the pinnacle of my career at my current school.  To advance any more I would have to take another position at a different school.  I love my school and have no desire to leave.  People don’t always understand and ask, “Why don’t you want to continue to advance your career?”

It isn’t about my career.  It is about the students at my school.  They need me as much as any other students in any other school.

It is also about my son.  I am a single mom and while the title on my name tag says Assistant Principal, the title on my heart says Mama.  My job is to raise him to be a contributing member of society and to help him make the world a better place.

I may not ever do anything amazing per the definition of other people, but I am helping lay the foundation for other people do amazing things one day.

What is the bigger picture for which you are working?

Who, What, and How

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Interested in my answers to the following questions?

What is the age/gender of your child?

Where do you work?

What has been one of the greatest joys of motherhood?

What has been one of the greatest challenges of motherhood?

How has your perspective changed since becoming a mother?

What is the funniest thing you have heard your child say?

Finish the phrase, “I never thought I’d…”

What is one kid-related item that you can’t live without?

What is your favorite children’s book?

What is the most challenging transition you have faced as a mom so far?

Head over to MomColoredGlasses to find out.

Bringing it all together

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Up to this point I have been keeping several different blogs, each having a different focus.  There have been many occasions when I couldn’t decide which blog I wanted to post on because the topic I wanted to write about did not fit neatly into one particular area.  I decided it was time to bring it all together at Simple Moments.  Here you will find posts on:

  • faith
  • simple living
  • children
  • single motherhood
  • relationships with friends and family
  • money
  • goals
  • education
  • work
  • our home
  • love
  • exercise
  • self care
and a myriad of other things, I am sure.
I will be transferring some posts from my other blogs over the next several weeks, which should help give you some insight and some background.  I can’t promise that everything you read here will be pretty, but I can promise you that it will be real.
Welcome to Simple Moments.  Thanks for stopping by.