See, What Happened Was... (A Toast, Probably A Short One)

Here's to you, 2023. You could have been worse.

I've done this sort of post several times before, so I guess it's a tradition, at this point. My favorites were 2013's See, What Happened Was... (which includes the origin story of that goofy title, and 2017... It's Not Me - It's You, one of my many breakup conversations with the inanimate. We have just under three hours of 2023 left, so let's be brief. 

Here's to January, which is mostly a blur of overtime and end-of-year gift processing for Beloved Employer, aided by my trusty endangered black-footed helperferrets...

"Is this really only one day's worth??"

Here's to February, the first half of which [Maris] and I spent with COVID. Yeah, I know. We were at least two years late. All the cool kids had caught it ages ago. What can I say? We've both spent our lives being unfashionably late for every fad or trend, ever. Why would COVID be any different? Our cases were relatively mild, which was still BLEAH, but made us grateful for all those shots.

February was also the month in which we learned that not only had Beloved Employer sold our dingy-but-cherished HQ building (5ish minutes from home), but they had also changed course and would not be finding another suburban space for us in-office personnel. We would be asked to commute to the fashionable but 75- to 90-minutes away "West End" of DC, where we maintain another mostly-empty office. I'm not exactly "cheers-ing" that... yet.

Here's to March, with its requisite Madness, made all the madder by the rapid preparation for leaving our HQ. If you've ever moved out of an apartment or house, you're no doubt familiar with being fully overwhelmed at seeing how much STUFF has accumulated and needs to be packed or thrown away/given away etc.. Yeah - try that with an office building that once held several hundred employees who apparently never got rid of anything over the past 35 years. So that was fun - and it was just beginning.

Wait - you know what? No cheers for March, either! I forgot Mom dislocated her shoulder for maybe the 30th time, and sat in an E.R. waiting room hellscape for about 13 hours. I was literally searching for an open walk-in clinic when they finally called her name. Next time, we're just going to slam her into a door frame, a la Mel Gibson's character in "Lethal Weapon."

Hmm... Cheers withheld for April, too. I grudgingly started shedding cubicle stuff in preparation for a downsized and not nearby cube in DC. Started taking wistful pictures of the old, rapidly-emptying office...

See? Sad.

Here's to May, because I feel bad not clinking glasses with one month after another. I worked my last day in the office right down the street...

Bye, cow painted by famous guy whose name escapes me...

...and worked my first day at the beautiful but distant DC office. To be fair, I love it there. There are some fabulous colleagues who, like me, actually come in to the office quite a bit, so that's been fun. The commute isn't even really that bad (when the weather is good and Metro's not broken). It just takes so LONG to get there. I marvel at you people with two-hour commutes for years and decades on end. Here's to you!

We're *DC* black-footed ferrets, now!

Here's to June! Nothing happened! Worked on my commuting skills, did some cooking and grilling and got a teensy idea for a possible twelfth novel, and a friend said, "do it," and [Maris] said "see you in August..."

Here's to July, during which I managed to crank out over 56,000 words, several of which might actually go together in ways that make sense. I don't know. I haven't reread it, yet - or finished it. I just kind of kept going. I can do that. It's a gift.

Here's to August! Nothing happened! It was hot, or something. Probably humid, too. Kept writing. Got a little bogged-down, but stayed in the fight...

Cheers, September. I'm sure you were a nice month. I appreciated learning of my promotion, which came a mere eleven months after I took on all that important, time-sensitive work. And the continuing wordiness that had my little novel #12 at over 80,000 words by month's end. Also, I was pretty much finished decorating for Halloween by then...

"Help!"

Here's to October, because vacation. 'Nuff said...

That'll do, OBX. That'll do.

Hi bird! Could you just scootch a bit to the right?

Here's to you, November, when I inexplicably decided to have another go at "National Blog Posting Month," and write a new post every day (which here means night) for the entire month. Actually, it's pretty explicable - it's because I am some sort of masochist. I did it, though! And one of those 30 bits of drivel was MY 300th POST!

Is that a lot? Also, do you dig our hats?

Also in November, we found The Last Spider. You can read about it in one of the "Thankfulness" posts from that month...

Hi. I'm not even hiding, dude. Sheesh.

Here's to December, still echoing in my exhausted ears. There was the Trans-Siberian Orchestra...

((Christmas Devil Horns))

There were [Maris]'s gnomes, and their 12 days of shenanigans...

They had a lot of help, this year. Merry Christmas, fellas.

There were downs, there were ups. Sadly, there was NOT peace on earth (not enough, anyway). But in my tiny sliver of the planet, the month ended strong.

So let's raise a glass to 2023, and eat, drink, and be merry. Most of us are keenly aware of what kind of show 2024 promises to be. I'll regret saying this, but tonight I say BRING IT. The good people of this country and others will find our way through this. We shall breathe in, breathe out, and stay in the fight - together.

Cheers...

Crunch Time At Work - An Ode (Okay, "Ode" Is A Little Strong...)

[Maris] enjoying crunch time - Photo by Joe

This will be quick, because if I don't keep it short, I'll just end up whining, and NOBODY wants that. Throughout my working life, I have held job after job where there's a distinct busy season. I know this is not uncommon, but I seem to have invented a "career path" where the crunchiness of the crunch times has increased with each new job. 

It started with retail. Sweet Zombie Jeebus, the whole last quarter of each year was a nightmare of twelve-hour shifts, increasingly-stressed and obnoxious customers, and the flu. It's a rite of passage for a lot of young workers - or, it was, when malls were still a thing, but I'm here to tell you, the only reason we didn't all go postal every January was because we were too exhausted to bother.

My next job didn't have a busy season, and it was wonderful and I loved it until it went to hell and I got laid off. The job after that had monthly crunch times for those of us tasked with processing orders. Salespeople are terrible to begin with, but their customers are just as bad. Knowing that we were a public company that had to report its monthly numbers to the board - and to the shareholders - customers knew the best deals were to be had when salesdudes were desperate to make their quotas on the last day of the month. We'd be in the office until 11pm every month - and don't even get me started on that company's YEAR-END. Moving on...

Then there was the good ol' VORTEX OF DOOM. Same M.O. as the previous job, but fortunately, they managed to only go through that nonsense every quarter-end. It was still ridiculous, of course. Roughly 85 percent of each quarter's bookings came in over the course of a couple of days. It was grueling, but kinda cool, as I was the only person managing incoming orders, so A) I felt super-important, and B) the sales team started bribing/thanking me with bottles of expensive booze. 

Joe enjoying crunch time (my hair was longer then) - Photo by The Internet

For the fourteenth year, I'm embarking on my busy time at Beloved Employer. We're a large nonprofit, so a LOT of our donors only give (or give more) at the end of the year. I don't have the actual numbers, but our mail/gift volumes go sky high from about Thanksgiving to New Year's - with the processing of said gifts stretching through at least half of January. Behold...

"This is just from one day?" eBFFs tryin' to stay helpful - Photo by Joe

Last year, I took on the processing of the "major" gifts. It's cool - a lot of wealthy people get extremely generous at year-end. We handle their gifts carefully, and extra work is involved, blah blah blah, and the volume becomes insane - mainly because, thanks to COVID and the remote-izing of almost everyone, I'm once again THE ONLY PERSON doing this work - in a $200 million organization. So, yeah. My usual cherub-like demeanor goes into hibernation for about two months, and my family (and friends, if I had any) wonder why I zombie my way through the holidays like someone who just worked 12 hours and still has a huge pile of work on his desk just waiting for him, taunting him, belittling and insulting him. Pushing him down and taking his lunch money (which is fine, because who has time for lunch).

But here's the thing...

I kind of dig this nonsense. I get to feel essential for a hot minute. I get a bunch of overtime pay (this would be a VERY different story, if I were an exempt employee). I get a nice reminder that my org does work that people just GIVE US MONEY - Sometimes a LOT of money - to do, and year-end is like a couple of months of that concept on steroids. It's brutal, and it (almost) ruins the holidays for me, but there's an adrenaline rush to be had, and I'm all about rushes, right?