Alive... but not exactly kicking

I can't believe it's been already two months since I last posted. But if you thought I fell off the face of the planet, well, I'm still here. I didn't go away on a holiday, I didn't suffer from SWAP hangover (as Marji put it so well). These past two months have been incredibly busy, it is the first time in my life when I felt constantly that I'm struggling to keep the pace with all the things that I had to do and I'm behind most of the times.

You don't know me (in person I mean), but I can tell you that I'm a highly energetic person. My level of energy, including physical, is naturally very high. I don't take any credit for that, it's just the way I've been since I was a kid - plenty of energy to spend and normally, positive energy. This helps me a lot when under pressure. Usually pressure (well, short and medium-term) stimulates me and makes me faster and most of the times better. So it is very unusual for me to feel that I can't manage all the things that I must do.

So what happened? Think lots and lots of work to do, a very important conference with high officials and important people from the artistic world to organize, a 2-weeks visit from my mother in law and her husband (they live in Dallas, TX) which brought plenty of supplementary household chores, trips to make all over the country to visit relatives and so on. A 5-days teambuilding that was mostly work - my organisation is preparing for the first excellence star (read more about the committed to excellence concept on the EFQM site) and I was leader of one of the groups doing self-assessment and improvement projects. Serious conflicts in my department at work, serious personal problems in my department... As head of this department, many of these problems have a direct impact on me, both professionally (as conflict mediator) and personally (things that happen to people in my team affect me) as you can imagine. On one hand I can't believe it's been two months since I last posted, on the other hand it feels like one year and not just two months.

I've tried to keep up with your blogs as much as I could, even if I rarely (very rarely) had the time to comment or drop a line and I know I have been quite an absent friend... But I'm back, even if quite tired and hopefully the month of July will be a bit easier (there's plenty to do anyway, more than "normally", but compared to how it's been, it does seem a breeze!). I managed to sew a skirt almost a month ago and two easy knit dresses this past week but couldn't bring myself to take photos or blog about it. I guess I just needed to take it easy and come back to the sewing world step by step :)

But it felt so good to have a sign or a small line from some of you, thank you for writing me, thank you for worrying about me! Thank you, Melissa, Designdreamer, Val, Isabelle, Dinah, another Melissa (who doesn't have a blog), Robin Denning, Carolyn, Winnifred from PR. Please forgive me for not having the time to give a reply, however your messages meant a lot to me. Hope I didn't forget anyone who wrote me... Which reminds me, it has come to my attention that during the last 6 or 7 months, there's been lots of problems with our email server (changing the server, changing software etc) and friends tell me that they sent me messages I never got or I know I sent them messages but they didn't get them. So, if you sent me an email and never got a reply, please forward it to me again, because I never got it!

I'll come back with photos. Promise :) It feels good to be back already.