Things are looking up?

Work update:

The weekend show has been running pretty smoothly with a few glitches every once in awhile, but all-in-all I think we're proud of the content we put out there. It's still hard to make the transition from weekday AP to weekend producer, mostly in the sleep category. On Saturday mornings/Friday nights, I have to be at work about 3.5 hours before my weekday schedule, and it's really hard to try to get enough sleep on Friday during the day. During the week I can usually wait until it's dark out when I go to sleep, but on Friday I think I put extra pressure on myself to go to sleep during daylight hours, which ends up backfiring.

The first hour or so of my shift that night/morning is pretty hellish because of the lack of sleep, but once a certain time rolls around and the caffeine and adrenaline kick in, I'm good to go. After that everything seems to go pretty well, and I usually leave with a good feeling after the show.

I'm just worried about having this perpetual feeling of tiredness while at work, and it really kills my motivation at the beginning of my shift. I can handle it for now, but I know that this schedule is not sustainable in the long term.

I've got a feeling that I've impressed people enough to gain respect from my coworkers, but I don't know if or when that will translate into a promotion. And don't get me wrong, I love working with the weekend team, and I'm glad we have this show; but I think health-wise, it's just not good for me to have this kind of shift, and I feel like someday it's all going to come to bite me in the ass.

Another question is, do I necessarily want a promotion? I know some of the day-shift producers can get really stressed out because of deadline pressure, and I don't want to turn into that. I think in the end, I've made the right choice in going back to grad school. But for now, I'll do my best in the job I do. I can tell lately it's been getting easier to get everything done, although a few things fall through the cracks now and then.

One sad note: our executive producer/assistant news director, Glen, had his last day on Friday. He's taking a news director job in Eau Claire. Glen probably was one of the main reasons I decided to work at NBC15 after I had interned there, because he was so good at injecting humor into work, and he was really good at what he did. I think I (and the other producers) look up to him as a mentor, and I'm a little sad because I'm losing the person I could always turn to for guidance. I know someone will take his spot, but the newsroom won't be the same.

However, I've been looking at it a different way to soften the blow: in the beginning of my short producing career, Glen was the one person I came to for story ideas and reassurance when things went wrong, and I believe he is one big reason I stuck with the weekend job. Now that the show is going much better, I haven't had to rely on him as much. In this way, I feel like he's kind of like a mother (or in this case father) goose in that he's taught me what I need to know to fly; now it's up to me to use that knowledge and spread my wings and fly with my show. And now I think I have a lot more confidence in the decisions I make with the show.

When I said goodbye to him yesterday, he congratulated me over and over on the weekend show, and told me to keep "pulling the train" of the show. And for him, for now, I'll stick with it.