June 19th, Monday

I'm really tired, even though it's only 6.20 pm. I didn't sleep very much last night, though i never really do except on weekends. I'm beginning to realize that that keeps me in my exhausted state during much of the day, even though i often hardly realize it myself, probably because it has been the normal state of affairs for so long. But today i was fairly fresh when i woke up. What exhausted me so much was work. It was fun work i did today, a good challenge. With just the smallest of pushs from another department and mostly on my own motivation i went and wrote a nice report on the problems they have with their printers, including the temporary solutions i have allready applied and recommendations on how to solve the problem permenantly. It's the first time ever that i've written anything like that, so before sending it out to the correct people i went and checked with one of my superiors that it was well written, covered the important points, and who exactly i should send it too. He said that it was good, and also that it was very good french (we work in french in the office, which is a challenge all of it's own). So i sent it out, and some time later i got a reply from one of the directors, who had received it from the department head of the department where they have the most problems with these printers, thanking me for it! So i feel really good about that. In my old employment situation i just never would have gotten to write anything like that, which is another reason why i feel good about having switched employers. Also that i wrote it on my own, under my own responsibility, and was taken seriously (as proven by the word from the director). That feels so validating, i feel much more confidant about my capabilities these days. When i started this job almost 2 years ago i had exactly zero work-experience on computers, and had never worked in an office before. And now i'm an important member of the staff!

Because i was feeling so confident, and because the phone was keeping still for once, i then decided to get started on the other new component of my job-description, namely the up-keep of the company website. So to start with i went and had a good look at what we currently have online, taking notes all the way, and finding hundreds of instances where details needed to be corrected, or where things urgently needed to be put up to date, so when i had finished this list i went and submitted it to the person who did the big push to put us up on the net and who is responsible for coordinating all the webservices. So he'll be having an appointment with me sometime tomorrow, and with any luck i will then be able to start working on this too.

So i feel really good about the work i did today, and it was almost 3pm, the time when basicly i'm finished with my job (as i only really work part-time). But just then the phone started ringing like crazy, and everything was urgent, so i really coudn't leave right then, and then some complicated problems came in, so it was 4.30 by the time i could leave, and even then i had to put one problem of for tomorrow, which i didn't really want to do because everybody is under immense stress with the upcoming Geneva 2000 convention of the United Nations. But i just wasn't seeing things anymore, and starting to do stupid mistakes, and i just had to stop. And now i am, as i said earlier, exhausted, but somehow i wrote all this entry in a record time, and i just don't really know how to stop anymore.

Yeah, so now i spent the last half hour or so desperately looking in all the drawers and stuff of the desk if i couldn't find my.... um, i guess you would call it social security card, though i'm sure that it serves some quite different functions over here, which i need so that i will be paid at the end of the month. I'm rather heavily nervous, i think i should go take a shower or something to cool me down a bit. Yes, that's a good idea....