Wait! — Where Did March Go?

I can’t believe this month is gone! Considering the pace at work right now, it’s no surprise, but… well, I guess it is a surprise! I think things will be more under control soon though. I took on a project a couple/three weeks ago that was pitched to me as 10-15 hours a week. I’ve been having some moderately severe anxiety symptoms the last week or so. Every time I step away from everything and look at that project, I can see it clearly & what needs to be done, I just. don’t. have. enough. time. I was in a meeting to review a schedule for the client Thursday & the engagement manager whizzed past with, “this is of course your only project?” I laughed. Oops. She was serious. I said, “No, I’m on two other projects as well.” This evening as I was doing my hours I ended up talking with the project manager & related this story, kind of laughing about it, & she said, “Wait — I thought you were dedicated!” I said, no, I’m the lead on one other project & shortly will likely be transitioning to lead of another project. She said, “Ohhh! You really can’t do this! It’s a 25-30 hour a week thing!” Yeah. I was noticing that. On the upside, I think what we’re going to end up with for that project is going to be much better for the project ultimately. Instead of overwhelming one person on it, we’ll be moving to a team structure. Sometimes it takes a second person to step into a role & say, “um, this is not going to work”…

Damn hard thing to do, to say this isn’t working, I can’t do it. I *CAN* do it, and I’m damn good at it, but I can’t do everything. It’s still hard to let it go, but it’s for the best. I did learn a hell of a lot about how some things work though which has given me some new & really valuable insights to move forward with. I don’t have to remind myself *too* often that I didn’t fail, I recognized that a different structure was more appropriate for the volume of work than one person (even with an assistant) forging through a bloody mess. On the upside, I think I’m going to still be on the team we develop, which is awesome because it’s a fun, real world application of why taxmology is deadly important in information storage, search, & retrieval.

I think at this point it’s a fairly open secret now, what I couldn’t really say much about last week. The woman who has been the lead taxonomist for the longest at our company is cutting back to about half-time. She & the client of her primary project, pretty much the longest running taxonomy project, and very high profile, discussed who could step into her role, while she continues to work on the project. They agreed it should be me. She’s a powerhouse of taxonomy experience & knowledge. It should be an interesting transition. There’s a lot there to learn, a lot of history. I think she likes me & boxcardewey, in her own way. She seemed to approve of the new person we’re hiring (as do I). Once we’re set up with the latest version of the taxonomy tool (oh, don’t let me go there! I have opinions! And they’re not good!), there should be more adoptions/migrations, and those are always interesting to implement — more learning! Yay! Exciting times! Although I admit to be ready for things to settle into something with a slightly less skeery pace.