Left smarting

My boss and I are usually very open with each other about our ‘buckets being full’, indicating that if we get another email we don’t like it may tip us over the edge into stress mode. Recently the workload has been steadily building and today was a day of emails about funding failures (the stock market is struggling and some donors rely on it), overly complicated grant submissions, short deadlines and dancing around between organisations and politics. During a call about an unrelated matter, challenging emails flooded in and I almost cried. So that was a career first, and I don’t think I can blame it on the coronavirus crisis any more than on my chronic failure to manage stress.

‘Admin piss’, was the term Gugs used for much of what we do, when I rejoined her after my call. It’s a shame that wonderful jobs in conservation management involve so much admin piss, but they do and other than conjuring up a brand new world, there’s nothing to be done other than to make the most efficient use of an inefficient and difficult sector.

During my evening walk Hannah updated me on her idyllic cycle in Shropshire, brimming with frolicking ponies and babbling brooks. I am in huge admiration of the way she manages her life with balance and doesn’t allow stress to get anywhere near her. We can all learn a lot from bananablip’s outlook on life.

I rounded off my walk at the shop to pick up some cereals and other essentials (more reduced Smarties Easter eggs on sale for only 75p). The homeless people in Cambridge city centre appear more desperate now than I’ve ever seen them, and it’s heartbreaking. A guy outside Sainsbury’s asked for cash, which very few people are carrying, and then for ‘yogurts’. When I returned with generic yogurts he kicked off as they weren’t ‘with rice’ (can’t blame him for wanting a MüllerRice as they’re lush). He then had a public meltdown because he was sick of people giving food when he wants cash. I trudged off utterly dejected that the tiniest act had left him more worked up than the condition in which I had found him, which was pretty dire in the first place. The sheer struggle of some people’s lives did then bring my admin piss into perspective rather starkly. I spent the evening slogging through the admin and inching closer to success with this particular grant submission.

At lunch I’d escaped the admin piss and the house for ten minutes to breathe deeply and lie on the grass.