MinnesotaMel

One week done...

Most people at post create a "post tracker." It is an Excel file used to track the amount of time that you still have at a post. Most of our tours are 2-3 years, and the tracker counts down slowly, showing years, months, weeks, days and percent of time left. On a one year assignment, the tracker moves more quickly through all of those numbers. After only one week on the ground I have already completed 2.6% of my time here. Days, hours and minutes drag on in life, but weeks, months and years fly by...I think that saying will be very appropraite to my time in Baghdad.

I have spent the past week trying to learn everything there is to learn before the woman I am replacing departs. She leaves soon, and I still feel like I really don't know what it is I am supposed to be doing on a day-to-day basis. My new job is less specific tasks and more responding to the larger issues and questions that arise in the field. A lot of it is meetings- keeping everyone who needs to know things in the loop. The military likes powerpoint for these, and I do too, but State is not yet a powerpoint embracing organization. I use the word "yet" because I hope that over time, and with continued interaction with DOD, that State will adapt some of the more effective tools of communication and planning. Of course, that is unlikely to happen completely while State is still employing fewer people than the military has in its military bands. And we can't employ more people in diplomacy until we are given more funding. It all comes down to money :)

posted by MinnesotaMel @ 2:32 AM