Working vacation

I am on vacation this week. And I am working harder than ever, it seems. Enjoying most of it immensely, but working hard nevertheless.

Kansas City has a Kansas City Corporate Challenge each year. Participating corporations pay to allow their employees to compete against other companies’ employees for bragging rights on who wins. It is also a charity benefit and promotion of physical fitness for corporate employees.

My company is a participant/sponsor, and I have been a participant for my company since 2005. That year I decided to try track and swimming.  I got contacted by a track coordinator, but no one contacted me for a swim coordinator.  I had never swum in any competition — high school, college or community — and was hoping someone could orient me.  The overall coordinator told me they didn’t have a coordinator, and would I like to coordinate.  It was a week out and I said no.  The Friday before I said yes, and was sent the list of all 2 of us who were swimming that year. I’ve been coordinator ever since.

We have a lot more people swimming these days, and the swim meet is a 4-evening event. As coordinator I go out every evening and play my “sheepdog” role of making sure everyone gets signed in and to the right lane on time. A few years ago I decided to take vacation the week of the swim meet. That way I could stay up past midnight the 4 nights of the swim meet (after the meet is over I come home, write up the results — publish a “newsletter to the company participants via e-mail, before going to bed) and sleep in the next morning.

So I have vacation this week, and am staying up late each night.  And with all that “free time” during the day, I have decided to paint the living room wall, practice my organ playing down at the church each morning (while the paint dries between coats), and if I run out of things to do between that, I’ll start cleaning out the basement (which hasn’t been done for a couple of years).

I’m not completely disconnected from work.  I check my e-mail each afternoon, so I can keep in touch with any e-mail people might send me about the swim meet.  And I cannot help seeing the other 300 e-mails I regularly receive in a day. But I can count on my competent coverage to take care of those — though I might chime in with a small piece of specific information they might not know, to help assist them in assisting me.

As I said, a very busy, but enjoyable, vacation.