To Relieve Some Anxiety

I have another post percolating about a play I saw on Friday.  I think I'll be writing it tomorrow. Well.  I've been writing it all weekend, in my head.  I'm going to try spilling my thoughts out on the blog tomorrow, to pick out what I really think.

I just popped in right now to relieve a little anxiety, I hope you don't mind.  I just sent a message to the Entire Library (all staff and faculty at all locations, state-wide), and it felt Very Very Weird.  Like, who the hell am I to bother everyone from the Dean on down?

It has to do with something that our team set in motion, it goes into effect the day after tomorrow, and I had to write and send the message because I'm Team Leader until June 30.  More on that later.  Oh, what the heck.  More on that now. 

The department head asked my team to start having a team leader.  Apparently, before Lana quit to stay home with her baby boy, she was sort of de facto team leader -- she took point on answering email, gave gentle nudges to us to get things done, that sort of thing. After she left, Bess kind of slipped into that role. When Bess retired I ... didn't.  Probably should have.  But you have to remember I spent about 15 years in a job where I got beaten down for taking any initiative, and the other member of our team? We rescued her from the same people.  So.  She and I did our impersonation of The Polite Twins* over answering email and our faculty member was so busy doing his own job that some of the messages just slipped past the bottom of his screen unanswered.

So.  Back in March we started having a rotating head (which always makes me think of Linda Blair.  Pea soup, anyone?).  And, partly because my last name was first alphabetically and partly because the other two were staring at me expectantly, I got to be first.  For four months. We all agreed that we should divide it into chunks rather than take care of a month a few times a year.  My time is up at the end of this month, tra-la, and then it will be Lindsay's turn.

Which reminds me, I still need to make a "Fearless Leader" sign.  I want it in Old English script, on parchment paper, in a gilt frame.  It'll pass from team member to team member as the job of Leader passes  on.  I can probably get the frame at Michael's, ditto on the paper.  I considered getting a toy whip and a doll's chair as well, but though that might be a skosh over the top.

So anyway, I wrote up that message about The Thing We're Starting, sent it to everyone I could possibly think of to vet it (if I'm being really honest, it was also a stall tactic to keep me from sending an Official Communication to Every Blasted Person in the Organization and Why All of the Sudden Am I Capitalizing Everything?).  When I got no responses but "Looks good!" from just about everyone (the other people didn't answer) I realized I was going to have to bite the bullet and send it. Oh, that "send" button was hard to press.  I've been working for this organization for 20 years and have never sent a message to everyone before.  Never had a need to.  Nothing I had to say was ever that important. But! I did it. And then I strapped on my helmet and waited for fallout.  An hour later, not a peep from anyone except a colleague over at another campus who I used to work with in Hell, before she got a Masters in Library Science and beat feet out of there.  And she just emailed to say, "Hi!"

The above was written around 5 o'clock. Half an hour later, nothing continued to happen.  Then I went home.  I do believe I'm done stressing now, though I might be a little flinchy about opening my email client tomorrow morning.

Maybe I should start thinking on that other post.

I never did talk about the knitting, did I?  No, I can see that I didn't.  Well, there's another post to consider, isn't there.


*The Polite Twins were never born, because each kept insisting the other should go first: "After you."  "Oh, no, after you." "I couldn't possibly. Please, do go first...."