With only one week left until the end of term and the start of the school summer holiday, this time of year is usually quite stress free, but I've had something on my mind now for the past few months... something big that (truth be told) has been giving me a few headaches, and sleepness nights, and now it is nearly upon me - the dreaded network merge between Evesham High School and Simon de Montfort Middle School. I think it's public knowledge now, but both schools are merging during the six week summer holiday to become an entirely new school called.... "The De Montfort School". and my job is simple - join both school networks together so that they are both on one network.
Sounds simple enough, and in all fairness it is. We are in a fortunate position where both schools are next door to each other and we already have a fibre cable/gigabit connection linking both sites, so the infrastructure is all ready in place. Once we configure a few network switches, we should be able to get SDM's servers and computers on to the High School's domain. The problem is, my constant worrying that something may go wrong at the start of September, or if I've missed something in my project plans. Unfortunately some of the work also needs to be completed by external contractors, so I'm worrying whether or not they can do their parts on time too. It's really messing my head up, and on many occasions I've been asking myself whether this is really what I should be doing for a living. It's not that I can't do the job - I can... It's the constant worrying. I suppose it comes with being a Manager, but I lack the ability to switch off after work too which doesn't help, and on many evenings I find myself using remote access to do some extra work on the servers from the comfort of my living room. I even admit, I don't spend nearly as much time with my family as I should.
So, what is the point of this post I hear you ask? Well, I've written down my feelings before in a notebook and it helped, so I figured why not write about them here on my blog. It's not like I have many visitors to the blog, so I doubt anyone I know will read it anyway. Even if they do, there's nothing new here - everyone who knows me knows I'm a worrier.
Maybe I might get a visitor who managed to control their stress and who can perhaps give me some hints/tips.
Just don't tell someone who suffers from stress and anxiety to not worry. If they could, they would!
