Have spent every evening this week hanging out with my buddies in the game Animal Crossing. I fish, pick fruit, earn bells, buy furniture and pay off my mortgage. Mostly I am vegging out with this game.

I have been so stressed at work that all I want to do is veg when I get home at night. Today is only January 11th, yet I was asked to have all the year end journal entries completed today. During a ‘normal’ month I have until around the 20th of the month to finalize all the month end entries. Yet I was asked to have everything completed for month-end and year-end today. Do you see a problem with this? Additionally, I had to set up all the new payroll deductions to start off the new year, get payroll sent off yesterday, review it today and make sure all the W-2’s for 2007 were accurate before distributing them today. Plus I had to close out the time clock program for the year and run a multitude of reports which took 2-3 hours. By about 4 pm I knew there was no way I could finish up the journal entries. So I decided to say no. And I decided not to bring the work home with me this weekend. I just need a break and the powers that be at work need to understand that this needs to be done the right way, meaning I must take the time necessary to be certain everything is accurate. I know they want to know the final numbers, but there is no sense providing numbers that turn out to be wrong.

So I’ll be spending the weekend finishing up putting away my Christmas decorations, cleaning house, doing laundry and maybe playing a bit more Animal Crossing. I will not be doing anything related to work and will try not to think about work. The weather is going to be beautiful so I may do a bit of yard work, my absolute favorite way of destressing. As long as it isn’t related to my job, it doesn’t really matter what I do.