Weeknotes #9: 16th to 22nd May

Today’s gripping ball of anxiety in the pit of my stomach brought to you by:

• A clingy, teething baby who no longer wants to nap, along with a 4yo who asks all the questions, all the time, no matter what I am doing (just before writing this, she kept interrupting a meeting I was leading to ask for a drink, while her dad was sitting next to her doing nothing.)
• My complicated tax situation which continues to plague me.
• Dealing with immigration issues for my partner, which involves a mind-boggling amount of long forms and evidence which I struggle to keep track of (honestly, I don’t understand how people with lower confidence or language skills would ever be able to do this without paying someone.)
• Not being able to find enough time to get to the work things I need to do, because of the above. (I always feel like I’m dropping the ball with my work tasks but this week especially, I feel like the ball has been dropped and has rolled completely out of my reach, and I’m having to ask everyone else to pick it up for me.)
• Grief over the recently-cancelled school year, which was confirmed this week (before I think I was in denial, always feeling like we were just a few weeks off things starting to rebuild, but now I’m having to accept that this isn’t happening.)

It’s frustrating feeling so down and worried, when last week I felt hopeful and accomplished. But I’m trying to accept that it’s the season I’m in and it won’t feel this overwhelming forever.

This week I made the decision to ban the word “unproductive” from my vocabulary and thought process after reading Salma Patel’s inspiring first weeknote. So I will say, I was very productive this week — as I have necessarily been every week since lockdown — but most of my productivity was directed at home fires than work fires. I have some big work things coming up, though, so this will have to shift.

A few other positive things have also helped me this week:

• Reading about Jacinda Ardern’s call for more workplaces to adapt a 4-day workweek has made me feel somewhat optimistic that as workplaces reconfigure to this new world, more will begin to adopt flexible working patterns (including, hopefully, my own.)
• I was able to listen in on a colleague’s AMA and he brought up the idea of Earthworming and it’s such a lovely analogy that I keep thinking about.
• Justin Trudeau mentioned CDS’s work on a C19 tool in a press conference today!
• It’s summer in Ottawa! The sunshine, and the freshly planted flowers and herbs on my desk/office are giving me life.