Out with the old

So we stand on the brink of 2012. Since the world as we know it failed to come to an end on New Year’s Day 2000, the fatalists are now pointing out that the Mayan long calendar ends on 12/21/12. Since that is the official end of the Mayan Great Cycle, and since the Mayans were so advanced that they were actually able to make a calendar that spanned 5,125.36 years (don’t ask about the decimals, since I have no clue myself), then they obviously must have known that the Life, the Universe and Everything was destined to implode/explode/vaporize/time travel on that last day. Something to look forward to in the coming year, I guess. At least I get to have my birthday in 2012. Pity about Christmas though.

The new job is … challenging. There are moments of clarity when I think I’m going to understand it all, but those are scattered among long periods of panic and frustration. Since I started the week after Christmas, I discovered that I am being trained for two four-day weeks and being cheated out of two training days. They’ve already issued the schedule for January, and they’ve stuck me on a night shift BY MYSELF my third day of work after training. Just shoot me.

Not helping matters is that I came down with some bug the night before the third day of training. I spent the night battling chills and fever, and I’ve had what I like to refer to as “dysentery” ever since. It was all I could do to pay attention the third day of training. The fourth day (yesterday) my trainer was off, so I was left to my own devices. I took advantage of the day by reading the training manual, making copious notes about how to navigate the screens, and listing a bunch of bugs I encountered on my user profile (it doesn’t give me access to certain things that I’ll need to use). My plan is to have my trainer let me try to do absolutely everything next week. It’ll throw off their schedule but it’s my only chance to figure out how to do this stuff.

I’m hoping next year is better than the past year. In the face of what others are going through my problems are petty, but that doesn’t seem to stop me from feeling overwhelmed.

Still, I started Weight Watchers the first week of 2011. The last week of 2011 there is about 50 pounds less of me. If I can do that, then perhaps other things aren’t quite so insurmountable as well.