I’ve kind of gone off the rails a little in terms of getting my manageressing course on. I was completely exhausted on Friday night after a particularly wretched afternoon at SML – uncovering All The Mistakes. It is some consolation that they were not my mistakes, nor were they my team’s mistakes, but we’re going to have to resolve it all come Monday. This will involve lots of unpleasantness and mud-slinging – though not my mud. This is a repeat offender in disclosing incorrect information to externals, and being, shall we say, dodgy – which will have repercussions. I really don’t have much appetite for any of it.

Yesterday, well … Paris. Utterly and completely horrifying. One of those really awful events that puts much into perspective.

Today, I was up quite early as usual – went for a 4km run (at least I think I was 4km – the excellent garmin is not being quite so excellent right now), I made a casserole for Tuesday night’s dinner, folded some laundry and then bunkered down in my lovely nest to work on my assessment. It’s a finance-y subject and I spent a good couple of hours trying to answer two questions which require workplace examples. Unfortunately these questions make assumptions that just don’t apply in an SML context. SML being unbelievably niche, unique even and just doesn’t operate that way. It took me a while to realise that – at first I, of course, immediately assumed I was just stupid when I couldn’t arrive at the answers.

Anyway, now my anxiety levels are pretty much at their peak. Which is not a good thing at all.

I have a strategy dealing with those two questions (ie. seek advice and suggest I maybe answer those questions in terms of a widget manufacturing business), but then I’m thinking I have wasted almost a whole day sitting here agonising over defining fixed and variable costs and identifying costs drivers when I could have been doing something satisfying and rewarding – like scrubbing the shower. And I still have answered none of the 13 questions – all of which require long-form answers.

And I have to ask myself: is this really how I want to spend the next 3.5 months? Is this how I want to spend my whole month off in January? How I want to use up my very precious long service leave?

I honestly don’t know.

The thing is, I don’t actually need this qualification for anything. There is barely any difference between this and the one I got two years ago. Will it get me a salary increase? No. More responsibility? No. Help me get another job? No. So why am I doing it?

I actually don’t quite know that either.

I think I thought it would be satisfying to challenge myself a bit intellectually, but as an intellectual challenge this is massively full of suck, because it requires thinking about SML – all the time. We all know how good that is for my well-being!

So I think I’m going to go for a wee walk, clear my head and make a decision as to whether I want to call it quits on this for real and not be suckered in by the nice people at the course provider!

Yep – being in my brain is completely exhausting.