Less Hustle More Coffee

Ahhhh, the coffee is so good this morning. Coffee tastes better when things are looking brighter. I had prayed earlier in the week for God to clear up the work hour situation. Several things have helped. However the biggest thing that helped is my “outlook” after I told my boss I would not be able to “bring benefits with me”. I think all in all the benefits probably took up about 20 hours a week if spread out over the month. Some weeks more and some weeks less. I thought I could “fit it in”. But not realizing how busy it is paying weekly, monthly, and quarterly taxes for 29 states, and understanding how much time that all took, and how much “accounting” type of work is with this (which I love by the way) I thought I could squeeze it in sideways. But the work load is too much and I was in a state of a perpetual bad mood. All work, no play and just feeling like I needed to move a bed in at my office.

So this week has been a little bit better. It’s not perfected by any means but it has been more reasonable. I am getting faster as things get more familiar to me. Working 12 hours instead of 13 or 14. But it still needs to be perfected. But it will be as time goes on. Now I see the hope of having a vacay day eventually. And feel a huge weight has been lifted giving back my precious benefits. I really enjoyed doing the benefits. That was my favorite part of the HR job. But God had to take me through seeing how bad it was going to be if I kept it, in order for me to let it go. I may not have moved over if I hadn’t thought that I wouldn’t be able to do benefits, but God knows what I need and he let me try it, knowing that it wouldn’t work. I still love the payroll/accounting role and have begun to set up spreadsheets to aid in the calculation of some of the things that have to be paid instead of just manually doing it each week on a piece of paper.

My soul is happy today and today for the first time in weeks, I’m not behind. The payroll is done of course, the taxes are paid, 401k is paid, all the garnishment agencies are paid, the manual checks were done, and today I will have a chance to prep for the next payroll as is scheduled, making Monday easier and I will attempt to do benefits and HR work this afternoon in an attempt to NOT have to come in Sunday to get all the people enrolled in their benefits for September. Need to update the OSHA log.

It’s taking time to fill my role but the following things have helped make this week better:

1. A lot of the HR stuff has stopped coming my way. My assistant is doing a fab job of keeping it glued together and handling the recruiting which I’ve been zero help with – just no time to even try to help, when you have payroll to do.
2. I’m better organized now. Developing systems/strategies for getting things done.
3. I’m getting used to the job responsibilities.
4. I”m getting faster at it.
5. I didn’t make any mistakes this week that caused extra hours of work (that I know of anyway).
6. Giving up the benefits, took loads off my shoulders. Although temporarily I still have it but just knowing that work load is going away makes things doable now. Enough I can enjoy life. I’ve been worried about this part of things from the beginning. But just needed to keep as much of my salary as possible. And that will be the next hurdle we have to cross. And that is a big one. As much as this job entails with the responsibility, the work load, and as much accounting and tax paying that comes with it – it really and truly deserves a decent salary. No one ever realizes truly what a job is until you are in it. Even those at the top don’t get the opportunity to see it all. But that is the one final hurdle we have to get through for this changeover to be a success for all. So we’ll see.

So the coffee is truly much better this morning and it’s Friday and looking forward to having some time here. Just hoping I get time to get to the benefits b/c as I’m thinking right now as many hours as I’ve worked lately, working on my only day to get anything done (George has plans for us tomorrow) is just not very appealing right now and will make me in a bad mood next week. So I may reconsider coming in. We’ll see. I still have to the first of the month to get the entries in.

Ya’ll have a good Friday!