Death of a Consultant

By that playwright named Miller…

I should be happy. I have so many wonderful possibilities here. It’s just that right now the Lockheed workload is so severe, I am feeling supremely overwhelmed. Like I’m so far down in a lake of mud I can’t tell which way is sunlight.

It’s like what I said earlier, I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I do perceive I am in a tunnel.

Oh, well, we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it…

It just that, truthfully, working overtime over a long period of time makes me feel…extremely lonely.

Like I don’t have friends or family or loved ones. I only have work. Which is good and rewarding work, but it shouldn’t be all I have. Ya know?

Does this make any sense?

A while back, other teachers at Lockheed were getting lousy feedback on their Mentoring classes. So, when they looked at the class-evaluation scores, they found my scores were stratospherically higher. Good news, right? So, I had a bunch of people sit in on one of my classes. They were very impressed. So impressed they hired me to redesign the class to make it more like how I teach it. More money!!!!!

Yawn, right?

Sorry.

So, I get a LOT of money to redesign the class, and I’m seen at the Subject Matter Expert (SME!) Whoo hoo!

Then Training and Development Magazine (T&D Magazine) announces that Lockheed is in the top ten companies for employee training for the third year in a row! Great! Then they tell me that my mentoring program was a great part of it! Wow! Then Galeynn tells me that they’re sending people down from Corporate to sit in on my class to see why I’m so spectacular…

I’m still redesigning the class. But the magazine and Corporate are here February 4th…

So, they give me a graphics designer and a communications person for a while to help me finish it. Wow. Wonderful… Except that I am now so underwater, I cannot even tell these people how I need help.

And then...my consulting firm calls me. Now, I've been telling them that what I've been doing with Mentoring is pretty incredible. But it took National Recognition to make them wake up! CONGRATULATIONS!!! And now they have to, just absolutely have to, learn about this before the article so the can be "experts" too. So that the comapny isn't caught with their pants down on what one of their best Consultant Liaisons have been dedicating his lonley life to. Great. And when is there time!?!?!!?

On top of that, I have to help justify hiring more people in Lockheed’s training department. I also have to provide evaluations and audits on two other classes (where I have to sit for 3 whole days). And I am currently assessing 153 people at Lockheed!

Oh, and I’m teaching at CNL tomorrow. And I’m meeting a vendor for lunch tomorrow, because neither she nor I have any other time to meet. Tomorrow was supposed to be “a day off…” Right...

And I’m extremely lonely.

I haven’t exercised in two weeks, and I feel fat and sluggish.

Because I don’t have time to fix food, I’ve eaten way too much junk food.

I should be helping Joshie more.

I miss David and Michael and David & Mikey and Sarah and and and...

As if that weren't enough, Larry is in the hospital in bad condition. I got to Floriduh South last night at 8:00 right after a 12 hour day at work, and right in front of him and Mark McGee, I started to cry. Then I realized that it wasn’t fair to Larry or Mark, so I bucked up and shut up. Put on my cheery face.

And I personally think it is not going to get better for Larry (I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t say this…maybe it’s just me…)

And I still feel extremely out of touch with the people I love.

At least the house is clean. But Cathy is overworked too, so we’ve had to keep Schweetie, the poor cat, indoors all day so she doesn’t get beat up after dark. Because I haven’t seen the sun outside of a gray sunrise in the last four days. Because when I leave work it’s already pitch dark and I’ve just been eating fast food shit and crawling into bed…

And I realized I really need to combine two of my play ideas into one. But who has time to write, or even think about writing?

And I would kill or die to do something fun with people I love and for them to tell me they understand and I’m not a total clueless shithead who is wasting valuable QT on work.

But I should be happy, right?