There are so many things that I should be doing at the moment (moment being 6.30am Monday morning) rather than updating my beleagured blog: finishing a presentation on finance procedures for tomorrow, checking informal budget revisions that were done over the weekend, working on the mapping between Concern coding and donor codes for EU projects...
But fuck it. I was bloody working all of Saturday and most of Sunday so figure I deserve 30 mins personal time before work.
The reason why I hadn't been blogging recently is that this past month has been absolutely brutual. Went to Miami for 4 days the week after the poisoning at La Gonave. As soon as I got back, spent most of my time with our Regional Accountant who was over here for three weeks to help overhaul our procedures and generally review our financial management. As soon as she left, got plunged into getting my team to prepare for a finance workshop which took place on Friday on those pre-final procedures as well as budget revision activities ahead of the Offical Budget Revision.
Quite frankly, I'm basically holding on until the end of the week when I hit Cuba for almost 2 weeks. Part of me is glad but I've been too busy to really anticipate or prepare for it properly - just getting scared about the amount of stuff that needs to be done this week, and it's not good.
I know that I'm stressed and have probably lost perspective on this but part of the reason for my bad mood is not only the sheer amount of work that I and my team are under, but the huge criticism that we got during our finance workshop from project people who leave at 3.30pm every day, have large teams to do God Knows What, only manage a tiny budget of only $100k or so, and who have absolutely no clue or really care how much we have to do in finance.
Maybe I'm unfair but for them to criticize us for being inefficient and not catering to their needs... I was so fucking angry and still had to smile and say that yes, we have not been as efficient as we'd hoped and thank them for their patience, when all I wanted to do was yell at them. I don't know, maybe there was a better way of dealing with the situation, maybe if I had a bit more gravitas or presence or experience, I could have defended my team better. And maybe if my French was better...
Oh well, it's a learning experience. I'm just fed up of being in the same situation as I was at my first NGO where I was working all hours of the day but feeling a complete lack of simple appreciation - something that just makes me feel really petty as knowing that I'm doing the best I can should really be enough. I know that's not true here, but that's the way I'm feeling at the moment. And managing a team just makes it worse as I know they're unhappy but I have to put on a brave face for them. I was feeling just so fed up last night, started thinking for the first time when I could leave and go on to a programme which did not have 19 different projects and 17 different donors to manage.
Anyway, I'm just feeling down and needed a whinge. Things could be worse and I just need to regain some perspective somehow.
It's now 7.10am and need to get off my arse and face the music so to speak. Will blog later on today on less gloom and doom matters...
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