I think it was either last Friday or Saturday night, I started writing a blog post. It was one of those, Holy Poop, WTF was I thinking sort of posts. The post lasted multiple paragraphs, there was so much stress and frustration built into it and it just had to be written down. After writing all of my thoughts, I deleted the post.

Why?!? Well the post wasn’t really meant to be published, I just needed to vent for a while. While I know people would have either tired to sympathize with me or try to empathize with me, that was not the purpose of the post. Heck, that is not the purpose of this post. The point was I just needed to really let loose and see what happened.

The response to the thoughts being logged was just amazing. I was able to look at the big picture and tell myself pretty much to put on my big boy pants, grow a set, and move on. The overall premise of my venting that weekend, was my feeling unbelievably overwhelmed with the amount of work on my plate as we speak. I am currently the only person doing the work of three priests in a very, very busy parish. The work load, the stress, the lack of free time, have started to take their toll on me. I have two more weeks to go and I just needed to “let go” so to speak and just vent. In taking on this task the burden falls to me, I made the choices, I made the decisions, I could have tried to get help. I didn’t not because I was all “I Can Do This” or I’m “the man”, realistically my mind said it’s a month, it should hopefully be slow, why spend money that I don’t have to spend to call in help, when I can do the work myself.

My mistake, my fault. I am an idiot. The law of averages or in my parish the law of funerals plays it that anytime I am alone anyone and everyone chooses to get sick, to die, or just to be a common pain in the ass. All at once. We will go weeks without any major issues, but once the proverbial reigns end up in my hands everything goes wrong. This time I just was overwhelmed. I do not like being the boss, I do not like being the administrator. That is not where my line of work was going. Yet, I am forced into these shoes right now.

The thing that gets me the most, my “boss” usually will go to Ireland for the month of August. He left July 29th and comes back around August 30th. That is five weeks he will be away. I am allowed 4 weeks of vacation, how can he a retired priest get 5 weeks? It doesn’t seem right. I do not even come close to touching my vacation allowance and yet he manages to take it all and than some. Again, it just doesn’t seem right.

So, I was pissed. I was not gruntled, I was definitely disgruntled but it was my own fault, so I decided to write it out and not subject someone to my stupid whining, when it is pretty much all my fault. I have two weeks to go and I am gonna do it with the biggest SEG on my face or die trying. (SEG = Shi+ eating grin of course.)

I am trying to find humor in all of these things as well though. Last week, since this post has now been a week and then some in the writing I had a phone call with a person I truly did not feel like listening to. Not because I was annoyed or whatever, I was just zoning, so what did I do? I stuck a penguin on my head!

That was Wednesday, I think. Thursday I gave myself the afternoon off because I needed it. I didn’t know what I was going to do, than a friend of mine called and invited me to a pool that he was pool sitting.

That was an awesome pool. It was very nice. I really needed it so it is all nice and I am trying to keep distracting myself with day trips and plans and fun stuff like that. So I am doing better than when I first started writing this out last, last Friday/Saturday.