Toughing it Out

Ugh! I've spent this entire week thus far with a darn-near crippling back pain. It was so bad the first part of the week that I couldn't even sleep - I'd doze off for a little while but my back would stiffen and hurt, forcing me to wake up and struggle to shift to a comparatively comfortable position ... before doing it all over again in about 30 minutes.

Fortunately, the pain is slowly going away. I started making myself walk around the library or do my back stretching exercises over the last couple of days. One of my co-workers suggested taking Aleve to help with the pain - which worked great since last night was the first night I was able to sleep most of the way through the night! Today, I'm still a bit stiff and sore, but it's nowhere near the pain I was in earlier this week. Kate even said I'd been moving sort of weird.

Yeah, I was even tempted to call out from work earlier this week since I was so sore it hurt to move certain ways. But I have a ton of work that needs to be done pretty quickly - and more keeps piling up! So instead I decided to cowboy up and push on through - which I'm glad I did, since I'd just be back-logged with tasks by this point if I had stayed home.

The Longmont library is going through a "re-alignment," which means an analysis of our services and workflows to see how we can adjust, shift, change, or otherwise re-work our processes to streamline our day-to-day duties. Naturally, this is call from on high to make us (among other departments) more efficient and effective - especially with current budget concerns. It's a huge project with a lot of details and brainstorming to handle. I know it's consuming a lot of Judith's (our director) time, and there's a lot that other managers are shouldering as well.

(Side note - I continue to be impressed with Judith and the other department heads. I applaud their non-department-centric attitudes - they see no issues with different staff working and circulating between departments. There's no "Reference staff don't work the Childrens Desk" or "That staff member works Circulation; they can't handle the other Desks." It's so very much a "We're all Library staff; we all help each other out." It's an work philosophy I don't see often so I'm glad we have it here.)

I've also got a number of modifications and updates to make to the computer lab. I have hardware issues, mostly shortages - like a lack of headphones and CD-RW drives. There's also the summer schedule to re-work - though I recently finished that. I just got tagged as a 'local expert' on Library 2.0 and online social media by a city committee, and I was asked for my ideas on how to incorporate such tech into the library. Plus, I needed to finish (or mostly finish) reading the documentation for new Envisionware self-service software products that we're going to be installing soon - all in time for a meeting with city IT folk to discuss server options.

And, of course, all this is in addition to the usual day-after-day troubleshooting that crops up all the time. :-)

So - compared to the amount of work that needs to be done - what's a little back pain? A minor annoyance to be ignored.

'Sides, it makes me took tough and dedicated and nets me plenty of sympathy. ;-)

Thanks as always for reading. Hope you're having a great day!