The Day Job has been getting crazier. Several of my coworkers have moved on to better things (full-time jobs, grad school, etcetera), and that means that those of us who remain have to cover for them until we get some new blood... especially the few of us (like me) who don't have standing week-to-week conflicts.
In less fuzzy terms: When I was hired, it was the busy season, the store was heavily staffed, and I was averaging just over 24 hours per week - aka four 6-hour days per week. Now, we're heading into the slow season (who wants to knit when it's 85F out?), there's usually just a skeleton crew working midweek, and I'm getting scheduled for 30 hours per week - another full day more, at least for the part-time retail definition of full.
It doesn't sound like a lot, but with a business to run, LARP/faire/convention season spooling up, self-imposed homework for assign myself, gardening season in full swing, and a schedule that's never the same from one week to the next, I'm starting to get run into the ground. Because I stay at my parents' place after closing shifts (the majority of my work schedule) so I'm not driving 45+ minutes while sleepy, and sometimes between consecutive days at work to save on gas, this schedule pretty much means I live in my parents' basement and just visit my fiancee and my bunnies and my garden and my sewing room on those two days off per week. I'm doing my best to bring projects with me and get most of my networking/research/paperwork-type stuff done in the morning and whatnot, so when I actually go home I can focus on the garden and bigger sewing projects, but that sounds a lot better on paper than in practice.
Even something as relatively simple as sitting down and organizing my calendar enough to put in time off requests for the many, many things I have going on this summer is proving difficult. I still need to figure out how many and what events I'm actually going to be vending at, which effects how many days off I request for those events. I'm at least one invoice behind (fortunately, it's a piece I made for a friend, so I'm not super worried). And I'm pretty sure I've missed the boat on a couple of commissions because I mentally composed a response to their inquiry while at work and then forgot that I hadn't sent it in real life.
In related but much cooler news, one of the summer events that was in the "probably going to for a day, but not sure enough to request off yet" category may have just turned into "three weekends of large-scale vending and, oh yeah, only a month to build inventory for." Not naming names yet, because I haven't officially said "yes" yet, and I'd be partnering with three other people who are confirmed for the booth, one of whom also hasn't given an official "yes" to adding me as a fourth. This is definitely still in the MAYBE phase, especially since it conflicts with at least one, possibly two, other events that month, and the prospect of building significant inventory in that short of a time span is rather intimidating. But it has lit a fire under me to get sewing and finalize a product idea that had been in my head a while (colorful bloomers with boxer-style elastic waistbands - low-rise, so they're easy to pull up under a corset), which... may make life a bit interesting, given that the bulk of this post has been all about how busy/short on time my schedule already is.
So yeah. I'm pretty frazzled, and it looks like I'm going to stay that way for quite some time. Oh, and to top it all off? One of my rabbits may be sick. The fiancee is waiting for a call back from the vet to see if he should be taken in for an emergency visit, or if it would be okay to wait until later in the week for a more normally-scheduled exam... and I'm stuck at my parents' place, about to go head in for another closing shift. :(
I'll keep you guys posted about both bunny health and event scheduling. Wish me luck!
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