Finally it is coming to an end... or is it?

I am an accountant and one of the highlights of the year in a boring accountants life is the year end. The day dawns when the auditors arrive and in our case about 14 auditors arrive and totally outnumber us. However, as we started our preparation about two weeks before they arrived, we hold our own.

They hang around and clock up the hours, we work late, and as the deadline approaches we work later and later.

These crazy hours have now taken their toll on our whole team. We are walking zombies who can barely concentrate. Our sense of humour remains, although there are bouts of anger and misery where we morn the loss of our social lives, our family lives, our sleep, healthy food and all things normal.

Each day we progress a little further to achieving our goal, but just when the goal seems so close it goes pear-shaped. Friday had us working to 12.30am after we thought we would leave at 7pm.
Monday we thought we would leave at 5pm and we left at 10pm. Today we thought we would leave at 5pm and we are still here at 9.30pm, waiting for one last journal.

One journal... the only thing stopping me from getting a normal life again. The 5 hours it has taken us (and still counting) to get this journal, means that we are 5 hours behind on tomorrow's uploading of results. Which means, that instead of finalising at maybe 2pm, we are now finalising at 7pm, which means another couple hours added to that to double check everything and we are looking at another late night. On top of that we are down to be load-shedded for 2.5 hours during the morning!

The negative side to all this is that I have not seen my boyfriend, I have not had sufficient sleep, I've not spent time with God, I've not seen my brother who isn't usually in Durban, I've missed a baptism service at church, I haven't been able to spend time with friends etc etc ad nausem.

So is there anything positive in this? Well yes there is...
I've seen the most beautiful sunrises in the morning.
I've learnt to appreciate the things I've taken for granted - eg. being able to see my boyfriend often, going to church, having a weekend free of work, getting a good nights sleep...
I've realised even more how amazingly supporting my boyfriend is.
I've seen what a wonderful team we have at work
I'm going to really appreciate the holiday I'm going on.

The saying goes that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It is indeed an accomplishment to get through this tough year end, not losing tempers with people and being professional. I certainly have not got it right everyday, and there have been some tears behind closed doors, but on the whole I actually impressed myself. As an outsider looking in I can find things that I should have done differently or improved upon, but I also know what my energy levels were, so although the spirit was willing, the body was weak.