I'm exhausted. But rather proud of myself. Today was a very, very hard day at work. My assistant manager was out sick and my manager only in the branch for a couple hours in the morning, which left one of my coworkers and me manning the information desk for most of the day. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, but with school being out and one of the nearby branches closed due to air conditioning troubles, we were completely swamped.

I had kids running around trying to sign up for the summer reading program; customers from the other branch complaining because they're certain *their* branch wouldn't charge them a dollar for an overdue book; our own usual customer strangeness; deadline-sensitive work of my own to complete; lunches to work around; staff leaving early; and five unexpected volunteers to put to work.

The whole day felt like a monstrous juggling act, where I was flitting from one project and mode of thinking to another, constantly shifting gears, trying to stay aware of not only myself and the customers but my coworkers and the general sense of the building. I'm really not a great multitasker---I'm bad at prioritizing---but today I managed to stay on top of everything. And I smiled through it all. Genuinely. I was actually in a great mood.

I'm sure none of my coworkers thought anything of how smoothly today went, and maybe they have the right perspective. But I feel supremely aware of all the moments where things could have gone wrong and didn't because I was taking care of them.

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