Welcome And The Adulting Premise

Welcome to the Only Child Diaries Podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life? That you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting while doing so with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries Podcast.

Leading A High Stakes Fundraiser

Today I'm gonna talk about working and working too hard. I'm coming off of a big event at work, my event, um, well, the agency's event, but it was my project. I was the lead on it, and it was a fundraising event. I'll tell you that I put everything I have into these kinds of things. This is what I did for 23 years at my last job, and I got really good at it. So at this new agency that I've been working at, and it's gonna be two years next month, I've really tried to create the same success with it. It's really hard. It's not the same kind of group, it's not the same kind of constituency, it's a totally different community, and it's been really challenging, but I'm trying to bring the same level of quality to the event so that people know that this is this is a good thing to go to, a fun thing to go to, and they want to come back next year.

Perfectionism And Owning The Mess

So that being said, you you might know if you're a regular listener, I'm pretty much a perfectionist. I'm an overachiever in a lot of the things that I do. Does that mean that my house looks like Martha Stewart? No, it doesn't. Because let's face it, I'm one person. Does that mean that I look like a model? No, it doesn't. Does that mean that everything I do is perfect? No. But as much as my um psyche and my physicalness and my mental ability can handle it, I try to be a perfectionist. I have very high standards, at least for the work that I do. So were there problems with the event? Did we fail in some areas? I mean, I'm very hard on myself in this way, right? Um, the food from the caterer, I picked a new caterer, and he was an hour late. Yikes. Okay. But did it work out kind of? I'm sure people had some issues with that, but we kind of kept people involved. They had some reception food, they had alcohol, they had some drinks, they had some things to look at, some things to people to talk to. Was it perfect? No. Did we run over? Yes. I there's I keep thinking about the people that I worked with before, the volunteers and the board members. I would have been skewered like a kebab, right? I would have been on fire like a fajita. I mean, I would never have lived that down. Understandably, that was my fault. I mean, my boss said afterwards, he kept talking about how late the caterer was, and I said, I'm sorry. And he said, It's not your fault. And I said, No, it's not my fault, but I still take responsibility for it. I'm not gonna shirk the responsibility on someone else. I mean, I couldn't physically go and get the food from him and make it be on time. That's true. But I still take responsibility that the food was late. I mean, I had a conversation with him that day that, you know, the traffic is really volatile and it's very it's variable, and it can take you 50 minutes, or it can take you an hour and a half. And I warned him about that because he was basically coming from the area where I live, and that was probably a bad decision on my part. I mean, just looking back on it, but hindsight's 2020, right? That's what they say.

The Adrenaline High Then The Crash

Okay, so I'm still, I mean, it's gonna take me a long time to add things up, and I'm taking some days off because physically I have worked so hard and I've pushed myself for so long that I'm exhausted, and I really had to take a couple of days here. Plus, there's my life and my husband's life, and I've put so many things on hold because I couldn't do them because I was working. I mean, literally, I think the last couple of weeks I worked like 55 hours each week, and you know, so factor in the fact that you're sleeping, driving back and forth to the office, which took about three hours out of each day, um, trying to take care of the pets, trying to feed everybody. There's not much time left to do other things, and then you're just mentally exhausted. I would drive down to the office and work, and then I would drive home because sometimes I couldn't work all night at the office. Um, I would come home and work, eat, and then I'd work some more until I couldn't really work anymore. So yeah, I okay, I wasn't working 70 hours a week, but uh 55 to 60, that's that's kind of enough. So, and I'm not 40 anymore. So, yeah, my body is just tired. Now, I remember at my last job, it was basically the same thing. I would, you know, get to the event. The event day is always it's always fun, but it's also always exhausting, and then you're on this adrenaline rush, you get to this point, then it's over, and there's the drop-off, and you have to figure out how to slow yourself down because you need to rest, and that's also the hard part. And I found before in my again in my last job, that if I didn't slow myself down and really give into it, which is hard for me, and rest, that I'd be no good to anybody until I did that. Um, it was funny because my old boss, who by the way, died of a heart attack, um, didn't understand this part. And I would talk to her about the adrenaline rush and the the drop-off and the recovery. And for her, like if she went home and slept that night, she was kind of ready to go the next day. And she did she she's old, she was what? She was like um 10 uh 12 years older than me, maybe. She did not understand that recovery period. And she just looked at Ruth, I'm exhausted, and she'd kind of look at me like, you're what? You're okay. Well, let's get back to work. Uh so yeah, it's kind of prophetic that she did die of a heart attack because you just you really do have to pace yourself, you have to take care of yourself. I tried to take care of myself as much as I possibly could in this process. It's not like this is my first rodeo, but it's still um still a daunting process. This

Doing Two Jobs With Less Help

time, especially was harder because my coworker who does help me through this was unavailable because of a family emergency for uh going on four weeks in the last month and a half, and that was really a stretch. And there was some administrative support, but it was not at the level that I needed, so that was also rough. So basically, I was doing a lot more by myself. I can I can um, you know, prioritize and I can do the things that are most important, but it's it's still tough. I mean, I put in 100 auction prizes on the portal, on the auction portal. I learned a new software platform, which was not the most intuitive of platforms. I put together the seating chart. I did the tribute journal. I gathered all the ads and put together all the copy for the printer. I think it was about 28 pages or so. Communicated with all the table sponsors, got all their logos, um, worked with the caterer, worked with the committee, worked with the caterer. That's funny. It doesn't feel like I really worked with the caterer, but um, we got some mugs donated from from a uh promotion company, which turned out really nice. Uh, then we had to package the auction prizes. Um it was, you know, it's a lot of work and it's a lot of detail stuff, and it's a little crazy.

Life Backlog After Overwork

So yeah, I'm tired. I just followed up today with the accountant because I don't think that they ever did our taxes. Back, you know, in April, I sent all this stuff to them and they said they were too busy to do it by April 15th, which was fine. But, you know, April, May never heard anything. I didn't want to reach out before because I wouldn't have been able to look at it anyway. So now it's time to start, you know, going back and catching up on some of these things. I also really need to take my car in for service because I think I was supposed to do that, you know, back when Bill was um recovering from his herniated discs, or back when I had COVID in January, and every time I get in my car, it's this little alert thing is like, need service, tire rotation. I know I need an oil change, and I've been so good to my car. I've been a good partner to my car, and my car has been a good partner to me and need to get that in. But there's things that need to be addressed with my car, so um, need to get that done. I need to catch up on the laundry, I need to catch up on picking up around the house because believe me, it's a disaster. Our house is always a disaster, but um now it's really a disaster. Okay, and so Saturday I did, I just wanted to go outside and work a little bit and be outside because I haven't been outside for many weeks here, and I was just trying to putter around in the yard and I needed to keep sitting down because my back was tired and I it was it was pretty warm. I didn't, you know, have the strength to um do what I normally do. And I know that the poor dog, she really wanted a walk, so I asked our neighbors if they would take her because she needed to get some of her energy out. Um, so that was very nice. And just just trying to get things done and caught up. Oh, I need to do the dishes. Yeah. There's always the dishes. So that's where I'm at right now. Um

The Thank You Gift That Vanished

the uh just a funny aside, the event was was so much work, and I don't I don't do it for any kind of accolades. I mean, yeah, I like to be told afterwards, hey, you know, we recognize you you put a lot of work into it and you did a great job. I think that that always means something to anybody that works hard. Um, but at the end, you know, my boss uh called me up on stage with one of the board members who's so sweet, and she she really did a lot, she really helped me. She was a partner with me, and they presented me with this beautiful crystal vase with um different colored long stem roses, and they were just beautiful. I mean, it's it was the perfect gift, it was the perfect thank you. And so I put them on the one of the tables in the back, and people were leaving, and I was talking to people, and then I was helping to clear the tables of all the stuff because we had to pick up the linens and we had to, you know, clean up everything for the rental company, and people were taking the center pieces because we said, you know, you could take the center pieces, and then I looked and I didn't see my roses, and I thought, okay, somebody must have taken them. Somebody had my back, right? And somebody must have taken them and put them in the office where I was working, and so you know, I trotted over there when I had the chance. I had stuff to take back. Oh, didn't see them. Okay, all right. Well, maybe they're in the other room where we had you know put some staging material. Oh my boss was there, a couple people. I said, Oh, did anybody see my roses? And uh people started looking. Dang, somebody took my roses. It's like, you know, oh well, I got to enjoy them for five minutes. That was that was nice. That was that was special. Um so it turns out I found out who did take them. I don't they it wasn't intentional, but it was one of we had some high school volunteers who were helping us with serving, and they misunderstood. Uh, they just saw flowers. The the centerpiece flowers were short, and they were red, white, and blue. They were short, like round centerpieces. Um, and then the roses were tall, um, right, in a crystal vase, and one one of a kind, and they're sweet kids. And they so they took those. And um, they took all of them. They took they took both kinds. So uh anyway, I'm gonna get the vase back because I think it was the the board members' vase. So, anyway, I was like, dang, that was, you know, there's my okay, and we also lost 30 plates. 30. We had I ordered China to rent for the instead of having like you know, paper plates, right? It's so nice to have real china. Um, and somehow we're missing 30 plates. And I first I thought, well, somebody took plates with the flowers and they've got a nice party scene going on. I don't know. So, anyway.

Nap Time And Closing Requests

Oh, well, now I've got some things to go do, but um that's all in a nap. Gonna take a nap. Uh, that's all I've got for today, folks. Next week, we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me. If you like this episode, please follow the Only Child Diaries Podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on. And consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page, Only Child Diaries, or Facebook, Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallace, and these are the Only Child Diaries.