The Measure Of A Woman

Right off the bat I’m going to admit that this is definitely not going to be some high brow intellectual article about women. If that’s what you were hoping for then you’ll need to set your standards a bit lower my friends!

It’s been a really tough and long week; I mean really long, and I am drained. As I get older, these types of weeks become a bit harder to recover from, but looking back at what happened this week I had a thought.

What is the measure of a woman? The answer can be any number of things, all true probably, but for me, after this week, it has to be the ability to accomplish forty different things all at once while the people around you sit on their hands and do nothing.

That’s what my week has seemed like. While I have been pulling my hair out of a head that is spinning around a hundred times faster than Linda Blair in the Exorcist, those around me have been going about the day as normal… playing games on their phones, going for walks, gossiping, talking about weekend plans, taking breaks….well you get the picture.

Every once in a while I become annoyed that while I am overwhelmed with deadlines and expectations, those around me seem totally clueless to it. This is a phenomena that I have experienced several times during my working career.

I have a job that I love, but it demands a lot. One of my really important responsibilities comes up only a couple of times a year, but when it does, it’s on top of everything else I normally do and no one else is qualified to help me with it. That occasional responsibility involves thousands of people and a lot of state and national laws. I like to say it’s planning a party for 10,000 people and not knowing who will show up.

I’m in one of those occasional periods now although this time the event was unexpected and the time frame for getting it done was only two months versus the normal six months or longer period. It comes on top of any already heightened workload caused by any number of things and it’s a lot of stress. While I try to keep my cool, it’s difficult to watch people around me, people with far fewer responsibilities, completely ignore what I am going through without even a modicum of assistance or understanding. Every time I am interrupted by one of them for something that has nothing to do with work, I want to shout, “Read the room people!, until realizing I don’t even have enough time in a day to explain to them why what they are doing is so offensive.

If work were the only thing I had to deal with, it wouldn’t be so bad, but there are family and friends to care for, a house to take care of, a pet to take care of, a writing business to keep going, and let’s face it….life is stressful for even more reasons.

It makes me all wonder if I am up to it, but then you know what? It’s 5:00 p.m. on a Friday and I know I am one week closer to being done with my big project and in the middle of that work, I ticked off a few of the smaller ones on my to-do list. I got through it and though I’ll be pulled in every which direction this weekend, Monday will come and this woman will start it all over again with a smile on my face and hope in my heart!

That my friends is the measure of a woman. Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

~BAL