I keep thinking that I will come on and type up an entry for my blog / journal. Then things come up and I forget to come on and enter whatever was on my mind. A lot of things have happened since I was last on.
I don't even know where to start. I see my last entry on here was in October of 2020, and was a dream that I had, and wanted to record. I've had many dreams since then, but didn't make it to this blog to get them entered.
So, where were we...
I stepped off the board of the Community Band I play in in 2018. Doesn't seem like I recorded that here. I knew that my manager would be retiring soon, and I was expected to apply for his position. And I was pretty stressed/burned out from the happenings with the Board, so it felt like a good time to step down. I continued to do the things I enjoyed doing for the band, like designing the programs, writing program notes, setting up silent auctions, etc.
My manager retired in the spring of 2019, and I did apply for his position at the request of his manager. I got the position, and there was a major learning curve associated with the additional responsibilities. The person retiring was supposed to be training/mentoring, but no such luck. I had to figure everything out on my own. In the summer of 2019, my department moved to a new office, from the medical center area to the north side of Houston.
Then COVID hit in March of 2020. The band had a concert the first weekend of March, and then we shut operations down until further notice. I heard that the board went to virtual meetings at that point, instead of meeting at restaurants like they had been when I was on the board. Friends and I decided that since we were not having band rehearsals for the foreseeable future, we would meet virtually during what would have been band rehearsal time. We ate dinner together in zoom meetings once a week and just kept up with each other! I continued to go into the office every day, as did the rest of my department. We were just told to wear masks to protect us all from COVID.
In February 2021, I decided to rejoin the Board for the community band...only this time as a member at large. I did not want a leadership position. The band's first performance post-COVID was a Memorial Day gig for the City of Sugar Land. We then did an altered Patriotic Concert to ensure everyone was still safe. Concerts have since started back up full force with the band. We had been doing silent auctions online during the pandemic, and decided to keep them online afterwards! In May of 2021, the department I work in got transferred to the National Routing Team. We lost our clerical staff to Dispatch, and I was bumped back down to supervisor from the manager position I had just applied for and been promoted to in 2019. In the summer of 2021, the president of the community band board resigned, and I ended up getting voted back in as president...only this time with stipulations of not getting over committed like before.
In the fall of 2021, I got a phone call from the band director of the community band, telling me that he had been diagnosed with some pretty serious cancer. He took a leave of absence for 7 months to take on chemo and all that goes with fighting cancer. He would join rehearsals through zoom meetings, just to keep in touch with everyone, while a band member stepped up and rehearsed the band, and conducted concerts in his absence. He was able to come back to conduct one piece at the May 2022 concert. He is now in remission, and has come back to the band full force. We offered the band member who helped out a position as Associate Director, which he accepted.
At Christmas time in 2021, I finally got COVID, and ended up passing it on to my mom and step dad. Jeff was either asymptomatic or he somehow did not get it. But I worked from home for a week while I recovered.
My department was able to go fully remote in the spring of 2022. It has been so much better since we are not fighting traffic to get to the office, put miles on the car, pay for toll roads, etc. I made room in the crafting room for my office space, so it has been quite nice to see Jeff during the day when he is relaxing and resting before getting ready for work at night.
That brings us to 2023. I am sitting here waiting for a billing cycle to drop so I can route it. We've been learning additional billing cycles, as being a part of the national team. I'm learning stores in Florida right now...we routed stores in Maryland, Ohio, and Pennsylvania at one point before transitioning the routing back to the team in that location. Lots has happened, some good...some bad...but we are still here plugging away at life!
