Drama Schrama

I know, I know. I haven’t written, again. I swear I’m going to get back into the habit of it, though, eventually. Maybe.

The thing is, about a month ago, I flew home to Texas for a quick vacation. That was great, and we had some big fun. I’d been struggling a little bit at work, due to some personality issues, and so going home was just the break I needed. Plus Mom and I went shopping for some wicked cool costumes for me, I got my hair done, and hugged on the nieces a bit. There’s never enough time with the nieces, unfortunately, because they’re as busy as I am.

After that weekend, I came back to work recharged and struggling a bit less. I know I’m no picnic to work with sometimes, but I also know I wasn’t the one initiating the problems. I certainly might have overreacted to them a bit, but not to the extremes I was accused of by the other parties. It was a vicious circle, but the circle was lessening because I realized the drama just wasn’t something I needed to engage in. I decided to set a goal to communicate less, because I have a wicked bad habit of explaining things to the death. It’s something that will help me here at work, and probably in life.

Anyway, that next week back at work was good, better than it had been, because the week before I left, I wasn’t sure I was coming back from Texas. It was as if there were big attitude changes from more than just me, though, and it made it easy to have fun. I don’t expect work to be fun constantly. That’s just not going to happen. But I don’t expect to be miserable either. Sure, I was tired of being on the phone, because I was conducting three to nine telephone interviews a day for potential summer staff, but that wasn’t misery. That was part of the dirty deeds which have to be done to get through camp.

So I interviewed a lot, and then we had a family weekend. Then I got the call in the early part of the week about Uncle Tim, and it was a scramble to get to Pittsburgh and back. When I came back on Saturday, we were in the middle of a family weekend, so I immediately went to work after the seven hour drive giving me a 17 hour day. And then, because I’m still a “new hire” and don’t have any vacation or sick time yet, I had to put in ten and twelve hour days Sunday through Wednesday. Because on Thursday, I was cutting out at lunch time to fly home for Easter.

But right before I left, there was an announcement made that my boss was leaving the camp. Not necessarily by choice, either, and that he’d be gone a week later. So sure, bosses come and go all the time, and it makes some chaos. In the camping industry, though, it’s a problem when the camp director is leaving two months before the summer camp staff start to arrive. It’s a problem when the summer camp staff expect to be working under the person who hires them, only to find the rug pulled out from under their feet before they arrive. So there was a ton of drama there, as we all rallied together and counseled them that they come to camp for the magic, not any one particular person.

There were a great many other mis-steps that happened along the way this past month. Some of them were huge, some were small. Every single one of them though, has brought me to the point where I committed to work through the summer, to make it the best possible summer here. And then I’ll re-evaluate the situation and see if being here is still a healthy thing for me.

For now though, I see a great summer ahead, for all the kids. A lot of work for myself, but nothing I can’t handle. Because the potential of this place is amazing. The potential in myself isn’t too bad, either.