I am in an extremely stressed out work situation but almost feel like "I shouldn't really complain ... look at what some of you others here are going through .... look at what others in my Branch at work have been having to deal with even from BEFORE Canada reached the start of lock-down back in March .... "

It is a kind of public-wanting-information-demands (as is their right!) work that is coming in at an unprecedented level for our department. And this is on-top of the mandated work the operational units have to deliver re covid-response public health policy and stakeholder relations work

I am SUPPOSED to be 60% or more IM/Disposition, with some other "corner of the desk or cyclical" duties. I am NOT the kind of personality-type that should be spending 100% of my time doing solo SIngle-window coordinating of rolling case-file management. I know some of you could probably do this kind of thing at this level of intensity no problem ... and still do some other stuff on the side ....

I used to handle maybe one request in eight months (extra-low even for my Department).

And I don't have / didn't inherit ANY kind of tracking system .... send a desperate email to the drop-box of the corporate-level clearing house for this, asking to be put in direct conversation with some more experienced Community of Practice counter-part. Waiting to see how that works out.

I don't even know enough about "how to keep track of everything (and still actually DO the consolidation for approval-up / turn in responses to corporate clearing house) in a way that if I am ever off for a week (for some garden-variety reason like a common cold or vacation) and my back-up has a migrane or her back locks up for the same days in a row ... how is the back-up back-up going to have a CLUE about the state of everything that is active?!?!! As the one-and-only IM specialist in the branch, I have nightmares about that!

And given what our Department is mandated to do, and what people want to know .... this isn't going to change any time soon Far more likely to get worse first. OR become "something like the new normal level"

This is SOOOO NOOOOOT how I want to spend my last 3.5 years until retirement!

And come September, I am supposed to lose 3 hours of processing-time per week, to spend in French-Second-Language classes .... which I would WANT to do, and are NECESSARY for my post as I will have to renew my ranking once the retesting program finally opens up again .... but now am conflicted about whether I will just feel even MORE behind ..... which isn't precisely the most conducive mindset to absorbing a second language where's the hair pulling / banging head against wall emoji when you need it??