One of Those (Wonderful) Days

I had one of those days today, so I’m going to share.

I was up late last night (writing on here to maintain my perfect record of posts), and, coupled with my trying to fit everything in over the past couple of weeks, the result was my ambling out of bed about an hour and a half later than normal. That meant that, after my shower, I only had about an hour to get the necessary reviews done before my 0900 deadline. And I was really hoping to start work on something else early today, too. The back-of-the-hand calculation made me wince as I stumbled toward the bathroom.

I clean myself up, come back, and boot up my computer as I finish getting ready for the day. Pull on this, log in there, pull on that, open up a browser, brush my hair, load a set of tabs, open up the curtain to let in some natural light, check the appropriate tab for the number of cases I have to do before the deadline and it’s… zero.

Maybe I should have pinched myself.

There was work for me to do, certainly, but there were no cases that had to be done this morning. I went through the short list of those that had popped up, checked on something, and switched tasks at 0832.

I grabbed breakfast (yogurt and fruit which was grab-and-go ready this morning) and started on the thing I had hoped I’d get done yesterday (*shakes fist at teh interwebs*) because of an impending external deadline. I wanted to get it done quickly, but I needed to get it done thoroughly and well, both because a client’s interests rely on it and because, as my first project for this group, it was imperative I make a good impression. (Especially given that this particular tech is right in my wheelhouse, doing well was critical.) Moreover, it was my first time getting my hands on working one of these tasks in quite a while – so not only was the heat on, but my hands felt like they were caked in mostly-dried mud as they went to tune an antique clockpiece.

Diving in, I skimmed my (handwritten) notes from yesterday, then flipped through the document I was writing for submission. Last night, I was a mixture of excited and frustrated: it was fun enough that I didn’t notice the time flying by, but there were several times when I just couldn’t grasp what the disclosure was saying. What does that mean? … Why is this here? … Is that supposed to be… ?

This morning, everything just clicked. Everything I was looking at fell into place: the invention, the prior art, the arguments that I knew I wanted to make but couldn’t put my finger on the appropriate wording… Everything. I thought I’d be working on it through the mid-afternoon; even with several interruptions, I finished before noon.

I also expected the partner would have a number of corrections for me. I’m a little rusty, I’m a little new, I’m a little a lot of things. And I’m working from home because of the pandemic, which also works against me and my focus. One of the reasons I wanted to submit the document to him early was so he would have plenty of time to look over it and make the necessary corrections. That’s what I’m used to, that’s what I’ve been told and taught to expect; that’s what I expected. And then…

“I reviewed the draft, and excellent work on it. Two minor style things…”

Excellent work. Minor style changes only.

… Am I dreaming?

I had to re-read the email. I work hard and well and thoroughly, but that doesn’t mean I’m used to receiving praise (let alone high praise) for the product. I got it done on time (ahead of schedule) and to the point where if it needed to be filed immediately, it could have been. Oh my goodness. I was thrilled. I still am thrilled. I was so excited that I had to step away for a little while to cool my jets because my head couldn’t handle all of the excitement at the same time as processing the information about another invention.

While I was metaphorically paused, I performed some administrative tasks, like plunking through the time tracking system. When I tallied my time on the project, it came out to less than three business days. And that was with me struggling with it. The first day I felt as though I didn’t know what I was doing because, the way my brain initially processed the description, it all seemed entirely foreign to me. I plowed through it because of the impending deadline, but it was certainly slow progress the first day, much slower than it had any right to be. Despite that, and some time wasted on trying to argue something that I recognized this morning was weak at best and wouldn’t matter at most, and I still came in under three days of work time. That’s super close to the well-oiled machine goal!

As if I needed anything else to top off my day, I clicked into my inbox after clock out (which was oddly quite late because I was so absorbed in my work) to find an email from a reference who’d had a “nice chat” with someone on my behalf and he just wanted to touch base and wish me well.

Sidenote: I owe him a really nice thank-you card.

So, okay, you may be thinking, “A solid day, but you were trapped inside.”

Today, I was barely tempted to go outside. Yes, I would have loved to have made time for a walk, and it looked like pretty decent weather, but for anyone watching my posting time, this is going to go up about 2300 hours, and I still have a few things I want to get done before bed. The mere fact that I wasn’t staring out my window longingly, wanting to escape from the task at hand, is a huge sign of great things. Everybody has those moments – you hit a stumbling block, or there’s a more difficult obstacle than you really wanted to face blocking your path – but today those were few and far between for me.

Tomorrow, I’m getting my tuchus outside. It’ll be gorgeous. I’ll get done what I need to in the morning, go for a walk, go visit a friend, maybe go for another walk, and figure out this Mass-without-church thing. (All public Masses in my area have been shut down by the bishop; I needed a day like today after receiving that news this week.)

This week has been exhausting in a fantastic way; I’m excited for what tomorrow will bring.

How about you? Are you sheltering in place this week? If so, how are you handling it? If not, what have you been better able to do with fewer crowds? What has been the best thing about your week this week, and what are you most looking forward to in the near (or distant) future?