#blogjune End of week reflections

If you only do what you can do, you’ll never be better than you are” – Shifu, Kung Fu Panda 3

Over the last 6 months my team has been holding 4 vacancies.  I’ve managed to recruit to all of them now so on paper at least I have a full team.  The reality of day to day is that I sometimes have everyone there and sometimes not, depending on sickness, leave, jury duty, family needs and so on.  I have had to accept that.

I hadn’t realized how much stress the lack of FTE had had on me until the other week.  I was up on the top floor of a building in the CBD overlooking the city and could see all the way west to Manukau Heads.  Looking at the contours of the land, the Tāmaki River entrance and being able to see where the portage path of Māori going from the Manukau to the Waitemata would be, reminded me of the importance of taking the balcony view once more.  I’ve been so focused on the dance floor, trying to get cover, doing extra customer facing shifts to make up for the lack of staff, not being able to look up from “just getting through” and it has taken a toll.

I don’t really know where I’m going career-wise anymore.  I have been thinking about “what next” for a while. I’ve applied for a number of jobs with no success. I don’t even know if I want to move on or not – there are some aspects to my current position that are positive, especially for my family and the latter has a lot of weight in terms of my direction.  There are still some things I want to achieve in my current position too and I finally feel like I can plan ahead with my new staff.

One thing I would like to do is regain my learning mojo. I feel very behind in terms of digital developments, technologies that affect my profession and potential uses of tech in services we could offer. I used to keep up with this but no longer.  So I am going to increase time spent on professional reading in these areas. I’d love to go to VALA again but self-funding is problematic. So this will have to do.