Into your Psyche

DSCF5097One of the realities of life on the road are long, long work days. Last year when I was in DR Congo for two months, I worked 16 hrs days every day except for one day seeing gorillas and one day walking through the town of Bukavu with my colleagues for a much needed break.

Such intense work means that everything you do gets into your head.

Yesterday my day looked like this:

Breakfast with colleagues, already discussing work at 7am. A quick staff meeting to say farewell and then on the road in Uvira by 9am to reach Bukavu by 1:30 – the only break being the photo shown in my post yesterday.

Then an hour lunch with colleagues, meeting a team of folks I had been working with from the DC side who are conducting a survey here with our support.

Back to work until 9:00pm when we finally all pulled ourselves away from our work and sat down for dinner together.

Back to work again immediately after dinner to work out budgets for the survey. Then reviewing documents from DC and keeping up with email, as I still have to do all of my regular job when I’m on the road.

I finally called it a day at 12:20 am, only to open my laptop up once more to send another time sensitive email that I needed a response by this morning. With 7 hrs of time difference, there is no end to the working day.

While it was a long, but relatively standard, day the thing that gets me is dreaming of work all night. At 6:10 I awake to exercise to realize that I am not so much dreaming as I am problem solving in my sleep. Going over calculations and strategies in my mind before I’ve even started my day.

Now for some coffee and back to another day of the same, except without the drive.

Cheers,

Miel

2 Comments

  1. 'Drea on March 11, 2010 at 3:09 am

    I keep turning a phrase over in my mind: problem solving in my sleep…

    That’s more like being on for 24 hours. No?

    Hope you were able to strategize effectively.

  2. Ms. Miel on March 14, 2010 at 5:00 pm

    Funny that after this long hard day, the next was even longer. Up at 5:30 and to bed at 12:30am. The day never ends. Luckily problem solving in my sleep tends to make my days more productive!

    Miel

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply