A great discovery...

I had the thought today of trying to see how far my laptop could pick up my internet connection. I walked back to my favorite spot in the backyard, and sat down on my bench, and sure enough, the airport is picking up my internet signal just fine.

I see myself spending much of my internet time outside this summer.

This is good news, for sure.

On a separate note, don't they always say that at the end of a job, you feel the stress of it more than ever? There's something about the knowledge of being able to look forward to being done that makes the last week or so even more frustrating.

I'll be so glad to be done with the orchestra committee at work. As each chairperson moves on, they try to ensure that the following year is filled with a great committee, and someone who's willing to be chair. The best candidates keep saying no to me, because they can't face the prospect of being treated as poorly as we are treated by our colleagues. As one former chair said to me, "if you're chair, you always receive the initial blow from your colleagues about anything that's going wrong."

It wears you down, like you wouldn't believe. I'll probably write about it in a week or two, but I've changed, and this job has changed me, and not necessarily for the better. No one who's done it really wants to ever do it again. But here's the problem: we're all very passionate about our future, and know that if we have a committee filled with incompetent boobs, then our relationship with management is toast. The other option is to allow the people who continually complain to get on the committee themselves, but if that happens, the inmates will be running the asylum and the kind of relationship with management that my committee and previous committees have worked to create will be in jeopardy.

I've been feeling the stress of this lately, and today, I'm angst ridden, wondering what will happen. I've been on the phone for a couple of hours, trying to finesse people to serve, or trying to strategize for what might be coming down the pike. I finally reached a point where I realized that I can't control the future, that my colleagues will decide what happens, and if they've collectively burned out all of the people who are willing to serve, or all of those who have the gifts to serve well, then so be it.

It's not my responsibility.

As I reach the end of my tenure, I feel completely worn down and used up by this job. I'm looking forward to some time to recuperate.