Breaking Point
I've made myself officially sick thanks to stressing over things I can't control. So, as I sat in Urgent Care last night, which by the way, is a really fun thing to do when you're oh, 1500 miles away from home and totally alone, I am going to try to make a better attempt at controlling the stress situation.Lucky for me, we didn't have any real work to do today since we finished up early yesterday. If you're wondering what I'm doing out in Denver, here's a stab at an explanation. I'm working as a technical advisor for the boss-man who doesn't deal with the nitty gritty. We don't do the nitty-gritty either, the tough stuff is contracted out and creating the actual product. Now that the product is coming into real life existence, the boss-man wants to know that he's getting exactly what he paid for. Hence me being out here to witness testing of the product. I have to be careful how I assess the situation, because anything that can be misinterpreted adversely WILL be. It's a problem of the office full of people who are not gainfully employed. Information becomes the most valuable asset, and gets amplified and exaggerated as it moves up the chain. How did I ever end up in such soul sucking work? Must be the decent paycheck.
I was reflecting back to all the fun I had during my MBA studies when something popped into my mind. Manage expectations. That's what I'm supposed to do at work. It translates loosely to, "Prepare the boss-man that he's going to possibly be let down before he gets let down, then when everything goes well, it's awesome!" I thought this was going to be the answer to all my stress related problems, until I realized that managing expectations requires you to take a pessimistic attitude with the addition of working out a solution for everything that can possibly go wrong. Even though you're proactive, you're STILL a pessimist. (This is also to be confused with being prepared, and over-prepared.)
According to a top ten list found on msnbc.com of things to do to live longer (eat healthy, exercise, more sex, manage stress, change attitude, etc.), I think the attitude change is key. I've been trying to be a better person lately. Really, I have. I've been withholding the snide comments that so deliciously cut people down. Sarcastic comments come easily. In fact, I don't really know what to say if it's not sandwiched by sarcasm.
As an engineer, I find that I spend maybe 5% of my time thinking of how something can be better, and 95% of the time fixing things that other people screwed up, or creating mitigation plans for everything that can go wrong. I've had a mitigation plan for my entire life like a which-way book until now. I'm not saying that I need to be passive, but I need to accept and believe that somehow, things work out in the end. I'm not prescribing to reckless abandon. Rather, I want to curb the overthinking and overplanning. Craig is the master of this. I think I drive him up the wall sometimes.
It's a hard habit to break. I don't really like being a Type A personality. I really don't. I don't know if I'm really this way, or if it was something I was trained to be given factors early in life. My whole life I've been striving to break away from the setting I was in. To overachieve and set myself apart on paper and physically from the cliques and mediocrity that I could never fit in with became an obsession. The things I've had handed to me in my life can be counted on one hand. In this sense, you learn to be extremely self sufficient. Not in the superficial kind of way, where you THINK you're a leader, but you're really a follower. But in the I'm-alone-most-of-the-time-and-I-am-comfortable-with-that kind of way.
So, I am giving myself permission to let things go, to pursue the things I truly enjoy, to put my feet on the coffee table too, and to learn how to relax.
posted by v @ 8:15 PM
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