Running a little late today. Didn’t sleep well and can smell the coffee brewing in the kitchen. I plan to dive head first into it once the morning prompts are done. So let’s get to it so I can work on raising my caffeination levels. Timers set and off we go.
Somehow this almost feels like a prelude to the writing prompt I wrote yesterday. Or the start of a horror story. I won’t know until I push further than the fifteen minutes the timer gave me. It is something I will be thinking about over my coffee though.
Tuesday, March 7th: I have not given up on you.
“I have not given up on you,” he said. She smiled wanly and watched him turn an leave her cubicle. She knew he meant it to be encouraging. He knew that she could do it. She knew she was supposed to be elated, filled with pride and ready to take on the assigned task.
The task she told him she did not have the time to add to her schedule.
Anna was so tired that she couldn’t even drum up enough energy to be irritated. Later, when she finally made it home she would pour herself a nice glass of wine, lean back on the couch and sip it slowly over the course of an hour as she gathered enough energy to make dinner. Then as she ate she would wonder why it was she hadn’t made it to the gym in more than six months and was slowly seeing the scale increase. Then she would remember work and be annoyed.
Resigned to the fact that this project, along with all of the others that were dumped on her already overly full schedule was now hers, He rubbed her eyes and then reached for the folder. She opened it and flipped through. In truth she hadn’t really been listening when her supervisor told her about it. Her mind was running through the other projects she had to get done and wishing that he would just go away so she could get back to work.
As Anna skimmed the pages, she realized it was not only a project that was not in her usual scope of work, but that it would require a lot of set up. She closed the file and set it to the side. She resigned herself to staying late tonight. If she worked through lunch she could make enough headway by the end of the day that she could leave it in a good place for the night. She could then stay an extra hour and set up the new project so that it would not completely destroy her existing schedule when it was added to the morning.
Over the past few months her schedule had become a delicate balancing act. She liked to think of it as mental Jenga. ‘At least my brain is getting a workout even if my body isn’t,’ she thought.
Anna set the thought aside and dove back into her work pushing hard for progress. Lunch time came around and she dimly registered the noise as the others gathered their things. It sounded like a group lunch. She had not been part of the group in a while. When she started there was a group that went out once a week. She was a part of that group and enjpoyed the coraderie of her coworkers. But one by one those people left and new people replaced them. This lot went out to lunch daily, something her schedule would never allow, and she never really felt welcome even when she did tag along.
She chalked it up to different personalities and was at least grateful that when they were gone, the office was much quieter. She had a full hour, if not an hour and a half depending on where they chose for lunch, of near silence in which to work. Anna ignored the instinctual feeling of being left out and dove into her project.
“Maybe if I get far enough in I won’t have to stay too late tonight.” She told herself.
By the time others trouped back in, Anna made great headway in her project and was starting to see the end of it. She knew she had other things demanding her attention, but the urge to clear it off of her desk completely was too strong to resist so she continued. Just as the others started to gather their things for the end of the day, she completed the project. Anna heaved a sign of relief as she closed it out and sent in the final details to the main server. As the others left, she reached for the new project. Maybe set up wouldn’t be as bad as she thought. She opened the file and began to input the details.
It was slow going as it wasn’t normally a database she worked with and it took her a wile to learn familiarity with the system. Finally she was through. She checked her watch. It was later than she thought.
“Damn,” she said. She hurried to close everything down. She often stayed late, but didn’t like staying quite this late. Outside, the sun was going down and darkness was creeping into the parking lot.
Ten til Midnight 