I want to make sure I remember the feeling of a weekend during my working career. I’m sitting here at 8:30pm on a Friday, waiting for someone that owes me a deliverable to email me back. Such is the life of a project manager/ client service person. You bother people, remind them of what’s happening and then check their work and try to gently nudge them to complete what was technically due at 5pm today. It’s a balance of staying on their good side (so they’ll continue to be a good colleague) and pushing them. Difficult balance.
I’m sitting here, looking at my phone constantly, waiting for an email. If it comes in it might be good to send to the client. If it’s not good and my creative has gone offline I’m fucked. I’m not out with my friends or even excited about the weekend at this point. I’m still working. I’m always working. I awaken to go to the bathroom at 4am and see I have emails from my client in Helsinki. I’m accidentally working out the answers to those emails even as I refrain myself from answering that early in the morning when my thoughts are not fully formed.
This is not an unusual event. My current role involves teamwork – wrangling people as a project manager. You can’t avoid it – and you can’t control it. It’s constant and never ending. We have a team that starts working at 8pm and ends at 9am. They send their questions within that window. Once again, I get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and that’s become helpful to my job. If I slept through the night like a normal person our India team would not get a response and possibly send something that was misinterpreted that I (of course) need the next morning.
So I just want to talk to Future Retired Me. I know that you will forget this, but if you have hard moments or even if you have moments that you wonder “Should I have retired? Was it really that bad?” I want you to think of me. This is not just my Friday this week. This is my life. I’m available at all times. According to my time cards I’ve worked 52 hours this week. It’s not 60, but it’s way more than I wanted. It includes responding to emails at 2 and 4am on multiple days. It includes planning for client situations at 5am. It includes stressing and bothering and impatiently waiting for all hours of the week.
I have no peace. Even my client said “Thank God It’s Friday”, but even Friday doesn’t bring relief to me. I know that this weekend is just time to get my errands done on Saturday and then be filled with dread on Sunday, waiting for Monday. Waiting for someone to just start screaming. Waiting for something to go wrong across the world (not in a real sense, but in a client service sense). There is no peaceful time. There is no true rest.
Don’t get me wrong – I am extremely happy that I actually get weekends off and don’t have to fill them with additional jobs. However, even with my extremely lovely work situation (yes I’m in my PJs on my couch right now) I’m still feeling so drained that I currently can’t think of what I should do this weekend outside of chores. This is the time I should be using to rejuvenating myself so I can give my all at work next week, but I’m not. I don’t remember what I do to rejuvenate. I’m still waiting for emails, ready to jump when they come in and pre-planning possible things that could go wrong and my reaction to each scenario. This is my life. So Future Retired Me – try to remember the difference 🙂 .
Great reminder! I went from a job that had weekends at any unpredictable point during the year to one where they’re centralized to only a few months, which makes it so much easier to handle. The fear of never knowing if I’ll have to give up the weekend or work overtime was a sucky way to live.
Oh wow – that sounds really difficult and like a challenging way to plan your life (cancelling weekend plans last minute etc). Glad you got out of it and found a more predictable schedule! Thank you for stopping by.