Monday

Okay, sooo... It's been forever. I am aware of this. Like, hyper aware of this. And I feel terrible. I feel compelled to make it up to you. And really, the only way I can think of to do that is to do a post-bomb. Therefore, you are getting an exclusive look at my life here in Greenwood on a day-by-day basis.

I hope it's not too boring.

Monday

My week starts around 6:45 am. That's when my first alarm goes off. I keep two because I'm always afraid one won't go off. The alarm at 6:45 gets me out of the deep, not-aware-of-anything sleep. Theoretically, it makes it easier to wake up completely when my phone goes off at 6:55. Practically, I hit snooze until 7:10, 7:15 on a slow day. It takes me about 30 minutes to get ready for work. Then I hit the computer.

There are certain sites I check every morning. I read the next selection in the Chronological Bible Study I'm doing at the moment. I see if anything interesting has happened on Facebook. I check my home email and delete most of them. If it's urgent, I reply; if it's work, I forward it to my work email; if it's not urgent, but still needs attention, it usually sits in my inbox until I have more than five minutes to spare. I usually wait until my inbox hits 100 before I do something about it.

I walk to work between 8:15 and 8:30. It takes me about a minute to get from my apartment to my office unless I dawdle, which usually happens on a Monday. I set up my Mac and check phone messages while booting up my slower PC. The first thing I do every day is check my email. We have an internal system, so I check the posts in General Information, see what Prayer Requests have been added, and when all the flags are gone, I open my inbox.


I don't think I've told you about my new duties, yet. I recently took over the job of coordinating prayer letters. Missionaries send their prayer letters to me, I either edit or pass them on to be edited, I print enough letters for their prayer list, and I send the letters off to be stuffed. Sometimes, missionaries have special requests, so I do stuffing myself.

But I'm getting ahead of my week.

I have two email accounts I keep open all day. The first is my main work email. All of my previous duties are still part of my day, so I catch up from the weekend. This morning, I had about six emails from my boss about various things, including a need to print 17,000 response cards for a DML.

My second email account is for prayer letters. It's too confusing to keep track of everything if it's in one email, so we separated them. It also allows other people to access the email and work on letters when I'm not around.

I get as far as my inbox when 9:15 rolls around and my boss arrives. Every Monday morning, we either have a department meeting or a staff briefing.

This morning was a regular department meeting. Anyone who isn't traveling gathers together and catches up on each other's lives, work projects and future meetings and such. We give prayer requests and praises and then pray for about half an hour. We typically finish between 10 and 10:15.

Then it's back to the desk. Monday is all about organization. What do I need to do this week and when? This is usually dictated by emails or by things I've already scheduled on my calendar. I do short administrative tasks and organize until noon when Sarah Leckie reminds us to go eat.

I'll tell you about my team tomorrow.

Monday is the unofficial department lunch day. It's typically me, Foster, Susan and Lori, but the base group is often supplemented by others in our department, Lori's daughter or husband on occasion, or whomever we happen to pick up in the parking lot. We change venues frequently. Today was McDonald's because we all needed someplace inexpensive and quick. At lunch, we talk about life, work or whatever, and we laugh a lot. It's a nice break to a usually stressful day. Today we talked about the Christmas party. Communications is in charge of some entertainment, but we can't decide between a video and doing something live.

After lunch, I started working on prayer letters. I have to request the mailing list numbers for all of the letters being printed this week, and I have to figure out how many letters need to be printed. Five letters were edited on Friday by Celia, but another three have come in over the weekend, so I will have to edit those before printing begins.

I can tell how stressful my week is going to be mostly by the number of letters I have to print. Obviously, the more letters there are, the more time I need to devote to printing. During a typical week, I'll print 6-12 letters. Last week, I had 12 letters, which meant approximately 4500 pages to print and fold.

It's a lot to get used to.

I can't let letters take up all of my time, though. Throughout the day, I'm receiving more emails holding more requests for editing or video work or file conversions. Last week, I taped a short funding video for Dave and Jennifer Sherwood. They are funding to be missionaries in Mexico. I edited the video and sent it to them this afternoon. I also worked with a family who is sending a letter to the constituents of their mother who passed away in September.


Another huge part of my job is prayer cards. We send orders to the printer every other Monday, but I am always getting new orders. Foster designs the front of the card with the photo, but the inside is all mine. I have to coordinate photo shoots with Foster, orders with our printer and design with our missionaries. It can be a lengthy process, sometimes, but they always come out looking great! Fortunately, I'm caught up with orders this week.

Another video I worked on recently was for a missions conference at World Gospel Church in Terre Haute this weekend. I did all of the filming, which is something of which I've been wanting to do more along with photography. I still have a lot to learn, but we watched the video today, and it was pretty good.

I did a cartwheel in the hallway today. It was fun. :)

The end of the work day can get a little crazy, sometimes. We have been making suggestions all day about the Christmas video, some serious, some not, and Foster had a thought about including something like what SNL did back in the day, so we had to watch a couple sketches on YouTube. We work hard around here, and it's nice to take a break now and then to be fun and spontaneous.

If you're still with me by this point, I applaud you. My day sounds much more exhausting when I read through everything.

I left work today around 5:30. It varies from day to day, but not by much. Dinner was... unsatisfying. I tried something new, and it didn't quite work.

Overall, my evenings are pretty boring. I watch television or read. Tonight was Criminal Minds and Star Wars.

And that's it. That's my Monday. I hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned for Tuesday.