Monday Memoirs: The Workflow Waltz Monday doesnât ask politely Monday doesnât ask politely. It arrives like a campus-wide reCAPTCHA challengeâmisclick once, and youâre decoding street signs until lunch.The inbox opens like a Balkan accordion: wheezing requests, project pings, and just enough cryptic survey logic to warrant a folk ballad. As Technical Solutions Manager, my Monday workload isnât just tasksâitâs choreography. Every process has a beat, every glitch has a refrain.â Morning Cadence:Triage SharePoint tickets with the intensity of a Balkan espresso.
Review institutional research deliverables (and reformat tables as if they were sacred scrolls).
Play whack-a-mole with policy alignment emailsâbonus points for commas and grace.𧊠Midday Orchestration:Guide workflow documentation for survey integrations like a symphony conductor with half the sheet music missing.
Troubleshoot LMS sync issues while munching on ribs, contemplating if Ajvar can be used as a metaphor for data accessibility.
Prepare project status updates that toe the line between concise and borderline poetic.đ¸ď¸ Afternoon Tangles:Untangle Power Automate spaghettiâfinding joy in clean loops and tragic branching errors.
Reinforce accountability protocols with the gentle firmness of a Balkan baba who said the somun was rising⌠but you peeked.
Brief research directors with clear, actionable summaries and maybe a dash of comic irreverence (if the room allows).By 5:00 PM, the day has settled like slow-cooked leadership proseâdense, flavorful, and ready for tomorrowâs remix. The tattoo of Monday isnât visible, but itâs etched in the soul of every institutional technologist who dares to dream in both syntax and satire.
The Art of the Sunday Drift: Tattoos, Somun, and the Quiet Logic of Pause
Sunday in Jefferson City doesnât ask anything of you. Not even politeness. It simply offers itselfâbarefoot, unshaved, a bit sun-dappled and unapologetic.I used to think of this day as a buffer. A prelude. The calendarâs layover between chaos and order. But recently Iâve started treating Sunday not as space before the âreal work,â but as the realest work itself. A quiet reckoning. A soft reset.Thereâs ritual in the rhythm. Somun warming in the oven like a Balkan memory baked into Missouri air. The steam risingâa ghost from Belgrade kitchens, carried through time and topography. On some Sundays, I trace the tattoos on my arm like stories Iâve archived on skin. Theyâre not just ink; theyâre institutional footnotes I chose for myself. Some aesthetic, some symbolic, some just because silence needed a companion.And maybe thatâs what Sunday isâa tattoo you donât show off, but wear anyway. Slow hikes that donât record steps. Coffee sipped without purpose. The kind of pause where your brain finally finishes what Monday started but never resolved.In a week full of workflows, Sunday is the only one without automation. And yet it moves us more than any trigger, any flowchart, any perfectly documented process.
