To check or not to check.

So, it's 10 p.m. on Sunday and I have this sinking feeling that when I listen to my cell phone messages tomorrow on my way to work, I'm not going to be happy. I'm preparing our senior directors and VP for a large client-facing conference for which dry runs start on site tomorrow. I wrote the slides and the marketing material and sent them to the presenters and said, "here you go - finish them and run through them. I'll talk to you when you're done." You see, I'm important enough to write the content, but not improtant enough to present, which at this point isn't a bad thing because I don't want to present.

Anyway, the first of the dry runs start tomorrow at 8:30, the same time my Monday morning meetings usually start. I'm not currently planning to be on site for the dry runs because, other than taking notes and telling people where they were inaccurate or need improvement when there will already be a few other people there to do that, I'd probably just network (which is important, but I still have a lot of other crap to write for the same conference). Given that all the presenters were too busy to write their slides and I had to do it, I'm bound to have many questions from them on their material.

Added to that, I haven't checked my work e-mail this weekend thanks to a surprisingly busy and productive weekend; I have also forgotten to even look at my cell phone since Friday. So the question remains: do I check either right now? If I check my phone, I probably shouldn't return phone calls now since it's so late. If I check my e-mail, most of the people I work with are bound to be online (sick, isn't it?), but do I really want to set a precedent that I'll be online every Sunday this late, given that I was e-mailing our VP back and forth at this hour last Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday? Hmmm....

The answer is no. Yes, I'd like a promotion and I think I deserve one. Yes, I think I should be paid more. But no, I do not think that checking e-mail during the weekend and all night is a good idea. It doesn't make me more important or productive - it makes me irritable, it makes me hate my job, lose sleep, incapable of unwinding and it makes me inefficient. Unfortunately, most of the people in my office are under the impression that working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is somehow impressive. Which is probably why I haven't gotten that promotion. Ah, well. If that type of responsibility means being plugged in to something all day every day when I have a toddler and a household and a family, well...it just doesn't fit into my schedule. You know, the one where I stay sane and don't hit someone with a brick.

So, no - I'm not going to do it. I'll regret it tomorrow...big time. Particularly since I did the same thing with my phone last weekend and found calls from one of our directors on Sunday at 7 p.m. Still, I'm going to try and hold out, if only for a little bit longer.

With that in mind...

How long with Andi hold out against the siren song of not having people demand "Didn't you get my e-mail?!?" Monday at 8 a.m.? How long can she stand to be away from her laptop? Is there any hope that she'll be able to stop compulsively reading new legislation? And when will she stop writing about herself in the third person? Perhaps when she is Queen? Stay tuned for...The Life and Times of Andi: Neurotic Nutjob of the Midwest (now with more nuttiness - and salt!).