partly

The A&E Show MI-5 uses the song "Love Me When I'm Gone" by 3 Doors Down in their advertising. I loved the song so I went and downloaded it from iTunes. I took a moment and looked at the other songs that 3 Doors Down had on that album. I was figuring that if I liked enough of them I'd just go ahead and buy the album rather than downloading the individual songs.

I didn't like the album enough to buy it but I did find another song that I really liked: Running Out Of Days. Selected lyrics from it:

There’s too much work and I’m spent
There’s too much pressure and I admit
I got no time to move ahead
Have you heard one thing that I’ve said

And all these little things in life they all create this haze
There’s too many things to get done, and I’m running out of days

And I can’t last here for so long
I feel this current it’s so strong
It gets me further down the line
It gets me closer to the line

And all these little things in life they all create this haze
There’s too many things to get done, and I’m running out of days

It's how I've been feeling lately. I have so much that I want to do and never enough time in the day or days in the week to get it done. 24/7 is not enough. Either that or I'm not using my time wisely enough.

Work is very busy right now. I am the computer literacy teacher AND the computer/network repair guru. This, most of the time, isn't that big of a deal because God loves me and keeps the computers and networks running well. Think that's a bit of an over statement? Well, keep in mind that while we have a very small network, our server and computers have been running for six years without fail. I mean that. Six years with an average down time of, well, maybe 20 minutes. All day, every day. Granted in the summer the classroom and lab computers aren’t used much if at all, but still it's an amazing statistic. What's more amazing is that in those six years running between 20 and 40 computers (told you it was small) I've only had to have 4 computers go out for repairs that were beyond my (very limited) ability to repair. There's something at work at here that I'm not in control of.

Right now we picked up 10 donated computers. The women's prison in Madison has a program where they refurbish computers and sell them -- cheap -- to qualifying institutions. The old, slow computers that no one will buy, they give away free. So, the boss ran down and picked up ten of them. Which a good thing. Only now I have to set them up and, of course, everyone wants them set up now. They fortunately came with network cards and we won't have to buy and install them, but I still have to network them. So, I have to get an approval for patch cables. I have to figure out how to get the new Win2000 machines to talk to my six-year-old Novell network. Then I have to install all the software and get everything up and running -- because if I don't update the Browser software and all the helper programs (like Acrobat Reader, Quicktime, and the like) I will be called up to "fix it" as soon as something doesn't work. And if I let them all download what they need... well, who knows what kind of stuff they will let infect their computers.

Then, once I get that done, I will have to field the inevitable questions about to do things on the new computers. What games/programs can I put on or buy with my (non-existent) budget? What should they do when their computer freezes up (and they don't know what they did to get to the freeze and they clicked off the dialog box that tells them what went wrong and the kids were all just pushing buttons and trying to fix it anyhow [darn kids know so much about the computers that it's best to just let them play with it] and they need it now because the very important document [that they didn't save] needs to be printed out right now).

Sorry. I'm getting a tad bit carried away.

It's really not that bad, only I am still teaching here (something I much prefer to *tech*ing). I still have grades to do. I'm trying to create two or three new, year-long units for a couple of my grades. I need to write a webpage -- as well as find a place for the webpage, get a domain name and set it all up. I'm supposed to "map" my teaching -- list exactly what skill I teach each student and when. I'm doing the yearbook this year and need to get a schedule to the teachers so they can "plan" for it better -- not help with it mind you, just "plan". I'm also supposed to produce five working printers out of thin air and install them upstairs so that the teachers don't have to walk all the way to the first floor to get their printouts.

I end up bringing stuff home -- no real surprise there, all teachers do -- only there's a lot of my stuff that I need to do at work, with the computers and programs that are in the lab. Plus, I absolutely hate doing a lot of work at home. I know its part of being a teacher (and the one reason why I swore I would never be one), but I should be able to do most of this at work not when my daughter and husband are looking to do things with me.

And I want to do so much at home. I'll start by just wanting to spend time with Wil and Myr. And I'd like to help Myr with her homework. The kid is doing so much at school that I'd like to be around to help her mellow out at home. And Wil has some really good ideas of a couple of comics that he'd like to do with me. And I do have a concept or two that I'd like too write up on my own. Then there is the usual day to day stuff that I wrote about one post back.

....

I'm feeling completely overwhelmed and frustrated. And at the same time, completely at a loss to deal with the frustration or explain the overwhelmed feeling... You see, the problem isn't that I can't do the things that I need to do. I know that I can do all of these things, I just can't carve out the time to do them.

I'm running out of days.