Overworked and underpaid

Well, that’s ministry. And that’s what I’m doing.

I’ve been feeling kind of mildly to moderately crummy this week, and it really came to a head this afternoon. The sort of crummy where I’d come to the end of my day and wonder “how is it that I feel like I’ve worked all day long and I still didn’t get the dishes done?” Well, I just looked over my “timecard” for the past week, and now I think I know why. My timecard has 9 hours of Family Ministries work listed on it. Mind you, that’s only the work that was done in blocks of time, worth writing down. Lots and lots of FM work is done in 5 minute phone calls and emails here and there scattered throughout my day.

On top of all that, I’ve also been working (for at least half again that amount of time, I’d estimate) on youth ministries projects – namely trying to get the calendar for the next three months put together (it’s already late being mailed out and it isn’t even finished) and putting together a non-hokey flyer for the Deanery Youth BBQ coming up and prepping for the Bible study lesson that I taught on Friday night.

Gee, that’s a lot of work.

So this afternoon I sat down to rest a bit and check my email. My email. The place where I ought to get fun things like letters from my sister and mom. Mine, mine, mine. Here are the contents of my email this afternoon:

1) Family Ministries email
2) Family Ministries email
3) Spam
4) Family Ministries email
5) Notification of spam
(which I actually should go read, because sometimes Family Ministries emails get blocked.)

So, so, so disappointing. I cried. And then I cried some more. My poor husband, who had to deal with me. :)

I am quite certain that part of my inability to deal with this is the fact that my lunch today consisted of Jonathan’s birthday cake and ice cream. (We didn’t have time to eat lunch before his party, because I was very late getting out of a Family Ministries event at church. Are you getting the theme, here?)

But I really think that the reason my life seems out of wack right now is because, well, it is. I signed up for youth group because I like youth and I had a pretty good idea what the time commitment would be. I signed up for Family Ministries because it sounded exciting, important, and my job description said FOUR HOURS A WEEK. I figured I could handle that much. And I think I could…only it isn’t just four hours. It’s twice that. And I’m already behind.

Someone, please teach me how to delegate. And say “no”. And organize my life better. Please?