My Assets Are Frozen

Long wet busy days. Long cold nights. It's hard to think of much else but the weather when it's this awful.

Work continues to be as hectic as possible. All the whining, complaints, difficult demands and phone calls not returned...and that's just me! You ought to see what the customers get up to.

Actually, that's not really true, at least about the unreturned calls. I cannot understand people who don't reply to messages: What makes someone listen to or read a phone message and think "Oh, I'll ignore that"? I probably leave about 30-40 messages a day for work...and at this time of year, for our company, they're all urgent. And yet, maybe five people would respond. Well, I have good manners. whether it's personal or a business call, I return calls as soon as I get the message.

No, I stand by the work philosophy: "Go the extra mile...it'll make your boss look like an incompetent slacker." No, it's not my boss I have to worry about. It's one of the consultants here, who seems utterly unable to handle the work, and dumps everything on me. She's a nice enough person, and not dumb...just completely disoragnised and always needing everyone's help. Mainly mine. Mostly this involves me handling customer accounts for her to complete, but she never returns calls, keeps appointments or follows through queries, just dumps it all back on my desk, day after day. Even though she's paid three times what I am to do this often complicated work. Look, it's so bad that last night I had a nightmare, that she was piling papers on my desk, stacks of files that reached the ceiling, and no matter how fast I worked, the stacks kept piling up...

I have a lot of nightmares lately, brief ones. What happens is this: I fall asleep easily at first, but then about 2am start waking, worried about work, and sleep in fitful bursts interspersed by nightmares. They're not monsters-and-death nightmares, but all-too-realistic bad dreams, attacking all that my subconcious fears most. Eventually, about 6am, I get back to sleep. But then...well, Xander sleeps at the foot of my bed, because I toss and turn. Then at 6:50am, the clock radio wakes him, and he runs up the bed and I feel a warm, furry presence snuggle into my arms, purring...who wants to get up? And it's still dark then.

Even so, I drag myself into the kitchen, put the kettle on, open the curtains as the sun rises, and leave the night terrors behind. Another day has begun, just like any other, as I prepare to return to those damned files.

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