Oh, Profanity

I woke this morning at 3:14. Sprout, having been in the great outdoors, made his way upstairs to inform me of his adventure. Purring madly, he nudged and meowed until I blinked awake enough to smooth his coat. He cuddled and I frowned at having a large, fluffy mass in my face while I was trying to sleep. But I’m a good pet person, so I sighed and closed my eyes. But I glared when he meowed demandingly for more pets and turned over. The action made Chienne – who was under the covers behind my knees – huff her displeasure at the change.

“We all have problems,” I told her and tried to ease back into dreams. I failed and finally got out of bed before 6 and began putting on clothes and curling my hair.

“OK, that’s not good,” I said before pulling curled hair into a loose ponytail and leaning closer to the computer screen. “There are confounding factors, of course, but an error message should have appeared. Are you sure it didn’t inform the operator of excessive noise?” We chatted for a moment – not really getting closer to an answer – and I had to leave for another meeting. “Set something up for tomorrow,” I requested on my way out the door. “I’ll make time to be there to fix it.”

“It’s not,” I informed my visitors for the morning, “that we don’t have doohickeys. And we don’t necessarily throw them away. But nobody knows where they’re kept either.”

“Are you kidding?” one of the pair asked. “A global, multi-billion dollar operation and you don’t have a single doohickey?”

“We have them,” I said with a grin. “We just don’t know where they are.” But I solved problems and wrangled people and wandered from meeting to demo, shaking hands with each of the men before they left the building.

“I have to leave,” one colleague said as I was walking down the hallway. I nodded, arranging my face into an expression of concern. “Everything’s fine,” she added, “but can you handle this afternoon on your own?”

I waved as she went away, thought longingly of lunch, but resolutely headed back the way I’d come to deal with more technical issues. I slipped safety glasses back on my nose to walk down the aisles through manufacturing, spent hours fighting with equipment and software and bits and pieces.

“Profanity, profanity, profanity,” I whispered when someone said they left me a voicemail. My light wasn’t blinking so I hadn’t checked. The automated message lady said I had 40 unheard voicemails and I laid my head on my desk in despair while I listened to them. I was left to return calls and make apologies for the delay. I blamed the light, of course, but realized I’m simply too busy. I’m letting things slip because I don’t have adequate time and energy to make everything work.

I ran to a meeting, getting there mid-discussion because I was late, then I left early so I could make another meeting, also arriving late to that gathering. I left early again to take a phone call, rejected an idea someone had (which made me feel badly, but it was the right call. So profanity it.) and took another call to hear about more problems.

“No,” I moaned silently when I walked into a computer lab well after 5 and saw a visiting researcher.

“Katie!” he said, rising from his chair to shake my hand warmly. “Do you have some time?”

“Of course,” I said, smiling weakly and thinking longingly that I was just going to check one last thing and head home after an 11 hour day. But talking is my job, so I chatted with the scientist, talked about steps and what’s important and prioritization for product structure.

“You’re killing me,” I told one manager today when he brought up production capacity, pricing and politics when I had decided on a vendor for a certain product based on technical requirements. He grinned and told me I was learning.

“I want to kill you,” I thought of another manager who keeps promising prototypes that aren’t yet ready. This leaves me to deal with disappointed customers and collaborators and I hate it.

I’m painfully busy and struggling to prioritize. My preference would be to pick a few things and do them well, but I see so many details fall through the cracks that I’m somehow compelled to try to catch them. So I fear my widening network just leaves me with more people to disappoint.

“Let me know if you ever want to leave here,” one of my visitors said. “You seem to be a great addition to the team and we might be interested in hiring you if you ever move on.”

“That’s very kind,” I offered in reply. “But I’m good where I am – I really love it here.” And most days – with today as an exception – that’s quite true.