I Need to Get Organized!

If there's one thing I hate about leaving at the end of the day is that my desk is a total mess. I've started about 19 "to do" lists (OK, maybe just 1, and about 18 sticky notes all around my desk and computer area with other items "to do" on them). What complicates the issue is that I have a nice LONG counter right behind my chair where piles of stuff keep accumulating because I need to get them off my desk calendar so I can actually see if I'm supposed to have appointments or not each day. Yes, we have modern technology of having a calendar engrained along with our e-mail program, but it doesn't always cooperate and send me 5 minute warnings before my next appointment. It seems like I alert the tech person every other month to come "fix" this so I get notifications, then when I shut my computer down for the night and then start it the next morning, there are no dinging reminders for me and I wait another two months so I can stop annoying the tech person. Thus, I really need my desk calendar which is my old faithful. Like a dog, it can never be replaced by a robot.
There is one more messy area in my office: my bookshelf. I pride myself on having lots of books on lots of helpful topics, and have gathered 30+ books on topics that I really want to read up on and be knowledgeable about, so when parents call me I can have JUST the right answer for them. The problem is, I have kids to talk to all day long, and tasks to do, and when I take books home, they get put in the, "I need to take that to school pile," and then they end up back in my office and on my bookshelf (as if I have the luxury of using work time for READING).
I could start in on how many binders I have for each acronym I'm on, like RtI, SPED, ENL, ENCORE, 504 . . . (If you're not a counselor in Indiana you probably have no idea what some of those are) . . . but I better not start in on trying to organize binders and folders, that would take me all night!

It's Not Slowing Down!

We're coming to the end of week #4, and it's not slowing down for me. Not one single bit. Surprisingly, I have not lost my energy or gotten sick, even though some days I am very tired when I finally plop into bed. I figured the best way for me to be a good counselor is to leave at the end of the day (in a timely manner), just drop whatever I was working on, go home, not think about my job, and get myself into bed at a decent time. If I do this and get sleep and exercise, I find that I can go at a fast pace each day and do as much as I can without burning out.
I hope this will last all year, and if things are not going to slow down, I hope I have the stamina to do the best job I can each day in the amount of time I have.
Ask me in May how that's working out for me . . .