Lost My $#&^ at Work

 I haven't visited this blog for a bit. I've been immersing myself in the study of Mandarin. My routine these days is:

Wake up. Let Mimi in for morning cuddles. Practice Mandarin on the HelloChinese app. Check Xiaohongshu. Answer any student questions that came in while I was sleeping. I spend a lot of time practicing reading, writing, understanding, and speaking Mandarin.

Work lately is pretty brutal. My team of five has taken responsibility for re-shelving all the books and videos on four floors plus a special collection in the lower level (aka basement rebranded). I'm mostly just scanning, so it could be worse, but it's still gruelling. One day I scanned over 3,000 items. We are all showing the stress in different ways. One person has slipped more into a bad habit of gossip. One is cursing people under her breath. Some of us are over 55, over 60. One has arthritis. Another has carpal tunnel syndrome. Finally a couple of weeks into the project, we got help from many eager young new hires. Other departments also have started to help. I think they were simply waiting for the invitation to do so, and I'm glad my manager finally got over her usual inability to delegate. None of us understands how this building will be ready in time for the grand re-opening. Oh, well. The contractor may surprise us all.

Today I had a mental health day because I had lost my shit on my team and got called to the carpet. My boss said it was okay to say, "I need to step away," or "I need a day off." So here I am... a day off. I spent the first half of it recovering from what was probably dehydration. I do drink electrolyte beverage all day, but maybe one tumbler of it was not enough.

Besides bringing out the worst aspects of each of our personalities, this project has made me more aware than before that I need a job that makes use of my intellectual gifts and Excel skills. Did I tell you about my new t-shirt? It says: "Freak in the sheets" with an Excel logo. Heh, heh. The other day we were allowed to stay at our desks all day instead of putting on hard hats and crossing through the dusty construction zone, and because I was waiting on others for the next step in the only job I could be doing, I used the time like Google genius hour. With DeepSeek's help, I automated a statistical data entry job that takes me three hours a month each month. I spent six hours building the import tool, so it will pay for itself in about two months time, maybe three if you consider that it will take about ten or twenty minutes to do some manual steps to help the automation tool to work on the first workday of each month.

My love and I are getting along better than ever. Last week we drove 2.5 hours to the nearest IKEA, and it was a lovely adventure even if the restaurant was closed for renovation.