Low man's lament

So I still have a major work project hanging over my head upon which I have virtually no direct influence, at least at this stage in the end-to-end process. This has been the case for weeks now, and last week I realized that things had officially reached the point where one of my major job duties is to simply accept a certain amount of passive-aggressive abuse from my superiors. Both my contracting boss and my government boss took time to ask me, fairly sarcastically, if the project was completely finished and ready to go. They both knew full well that it was not, but their sarcasm stopped just short of making the question rhetorical. So I had to provide on-the-spot status updates to each of them, which consisted of thinking of diplomatic ways of saying that nothing had changed, that other people needed to take the next round of actions and not only had not done so but had not communicated the slightest indication of when they might deign to do so. And I had to deliver this news in a way that made it sound like I was somehow doing something (deliberately ambiguous) to keep myself involved in the process and move things along.

I understand that my bosses are frustrated, because of course I’m frustrated, too. And I know that my bosses aren’t really frustrated with me, just the sluggishness of the overall process, but I’m their liaison to the process and I’m the only target to snipe at that they’ve got. And like I said, I accept that this is just another part of my job. Effluvium rolls down the chain-of-command hill, and I sit at the bottom and have to expect to take my share in stride, as part of the natural order of things.

Then today I found out that some required paperwork I had been tasked with completing for the project was incomplete. I have no idea why it took two weeks from the time I submitted it for anyone to notice this, but here we are. On the one hand I have new information for my bosses the next time they ask about the project, but on the other hand it’s not exactly great information. It’s an explanation of the delay, sort of, and it doesn’t reflect poorly on me, exactly (everyone knows I’ve never been part of a project like this before; I assumed in good faith that I had completed the paperwork fully and accurately; the only reasonable conclusion is that whoever received my paperwork didn’t bother to look at it for weeks) but still. Not great. I can only hope against hope that this will be the last major snag and things will barrel towards the finish line from here. But rolling the barrel uphill is always easier said than done.