Doing it Again and Again

I logged into my work PC tonight. I hadn't been on the PC in the den all weekend - we were out of town Sat. AM in Cedar Falls and today I slept in - so I was just kind of curious what had happened @ work after I left @ 5.

Shocking news. As I was leaving Friday, one of my friends Sue told me that her last day was that day and that I wouldn't see her at our employer again. Sue was a good Support rep and I think from what I had observed, she was learning quickly. That said, I didn't work with her daily so I admit I am not the best of judges.

So tonight, when I got onto my work PC, I also learned that my friend Leah is done at our employer as well. I will miss Leah. She would have had her 2 year anniversary in just a few short days. I learned my Girl Authority CD to her and she lost it. . I hope Leah lands on her feet and that her reason(s) for leaving work out for her.

I had high hopes for both Sue and Leah to lead the new generation of support reps. We had another guy, Derek, leave earlier this month as well. I don't know what's going on but I hope it's not something serious. Our Support reps are our first line of Customer Support and, frankly, we need knowledge up front. Training new employees is time-consuming. I hope the company hires replacements quickly. The Support dept has a lot of initiatives on-going and losing three people is not going to make anyone's job easier.

As for me, I have a meeting with my manager on Wednesday to talk about my progress in the last year. I have accomplished many things and I feel good about where I have progressed in the last year. I had an aggressive set of goals laid out for me but, frankly, most of them did not get accomplished due to the workload I was expected to complete. In my mind, I am doing the work of two full-time people. I hop from developing the UI for our Windows Screens product and releasing those changes to the clients over to actual writing documentation. I was asked, of the two, which I liked more. A year ago, hands-down, I would have said writing documentation. Lately, even before the J Walk training, I've been liking developing the UI as much. I think I'm starting to master those tasks. I still make mistakes and no, I'm not perfect. But in the sense of learning, I feel like I learn the most with developing the UI.

That all said, looking ahead, I have until the end of this month to clear away my backlog of projects - and the backlog is pretty thick - so that I can start writing documentation for a new product that will encompass 9 different new systems into a new suite. That means that there will be hundreds - I'm guessing - of new screens to write about and that will keep me very busy. That product is due to QA by the end of the year. I am really hoping that I can wrap my head around all the intricacies of it and make my goal of having it all documented by the time it arrives in QA at the end of 2008. I need to find a way to make that happen.

Which brings me back to trying to balance the work of two full-time positions. It's not going to work forever and something has to give. Hopefully, my conversation with my manager on Wednesday delves into how and what is going to give.