It occurred to me today that nothing –or no one– stays hidden for long.

I hid at work today. Probably not something to just throw out there and admit, but, there it is.

I left a place where people were ‘on to me’, where people seemed to be all about the business of interrupting me with their issues and their problems, and I went to a different building. Now, it just so happens that I can do this whenever I’d like –almost whenever; there are a couple of hours during the day, when I teach, where I have to be in a certain place at a certain time. The idea that I did it to escape a group of people is a fact that will probably remain unknown to the people that I was hoping to avoid.

The funny thing about this maneuver was that it didn’t work. Here’s what happened.

Under the guise of a need to answer some pressing help desk tickets, I left one building and made my way to a different one. At this other building, I set about the work of fixing some of the issues that were lingering help desk tickets in my help desk system at work. I’d knocked out about five of these help desk issues when kismet found me, after I’d tried to hide and everything.

The building where I’d gone to hide was experience building-wide online testing problems, and I needed to ‘fix it’. Since I was already there –albeit trying to hide– I was perfectly positioned to try to address the testing issues. Doesn’t that just beat all? You are trying to hide from major issues, and you end up walking into major issues.

Talk about jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire!

There’s nothing like walking into a room where a teacher and her entire class of students are not able to do what the technology is supposed to allow them to do, with the expectation that you are going to be the one to ‘fix it’. It’s a pressure-cooker. Pile on top of that the text messages that are coming in to my phone, while I am troubleshooting, from the other teachers in this particular building who are having problems with on-line testing, as well.

Granted, this wasn’t brought on by my decision to hide in another building. Additionally, if I’d been in that first building where I started my day today, I would have just found it necessary to report to this other building, anyway. In a way, it kind of worked out pretty well.

In any case, as it turned out, the problem wasn’t ours –> the problem was the result of the on-line testing provider being overwhelmed by the number of testing students they were trying to host. I measured connection speeds to the servers of this on-line testing host and discovered that traffic was very fast, right until you got close to their servers.

So, not much else to do in that situation: our Instructional Services Director sent an email to the staff to let them know that we were going to continue to measure connectivity speeds and we would let them know when they could attempt to test their students.

And I went back to trying to knock out some more help desk issues.

I know some decent hiding places in the district, which isn’t to say that I locate myself behind the air circulation vents in the service balcony surrounding the high school gym, because I wouldn’t be able to do much of anything back there. The point isn’t to hide, so much, as it is to try to find a place where I can go to be able to accomplish what I need to accomplish. These places, where I ‘hide’, are really just spots where I can grab some time on a computer that no one ever uses in a certain office, or where I can sit at a desk with a laptop and no one is likely to find me. I can organize my inbox (which always gets destroyed in September) or I can iron out inventory issues with my asset tracking software, or I can check off items on the help desk website.

Late this morning, while I was answering some of the emails that had come in while I was trying to ‘fix’ on-line testing for the building I was in, I sat at this certain desk in this certain place and I just felt a little overwhelmed for a few moments.

I get to the place where I just feel like crying. Not that doing such a thing would help at all; at least I can’t imagine that it would. The need is so great and I am only able to do so much, be in one place at a time, troubleshoot one or two issues at a time. Additionally, there are all of the things that are out of my control, that people assume I can control, because they don’t understand that what I do isn’t special. I just have some knowledge.

Just because there is someone in your life who is able to do things that occur to you as being magical doesn’t actually mean that the person is magical, that they can control all things everywhere.

But, as I was sitting at the desk, gathering my composure, I knew that I couldn’t stay in that place, metaphorically speaking. I knew that I would have to leave that place.

Not only does nothing get done if I stay in that place, but it’s not a place of light. It’s a place of darkness –> the frustrations and the anxieties and the desperations are all part of a dark place that I can’t stay in. Instead, when that happens, when I feel like I am starting to be overwhelmed, I get moving.

I have to keep moving because there isn’t anything to do but to keep on, keepin’ on.

So, that’s what I did. And I went on to solve a bunch of other issues today. I even got around to helping some of the people that were bugging me so much at the beginning at the day that I felt the need to hide.

Hopefully, if you’re ever in a situation where you feel like hiding, you’ll 1) find a decent place to lay low for a few minutes, and 2) realize that you can’t stay there.