Caterwauling

Just a quick sanity break before, well, my sanity breaks.

I appreciate that people set deadlines, or else nothing would get done. I can appreciate that they set aggressive deadlines, so that we can do more and sooner.

Because in my business, every moment you’re not making a sale, you’re losing business. Period, end of story.

But setting aggressive deadlines on maxed-out workers isn’t a good strategy. Because some of us will literally kill ourselves trying. And I’m not just talking about myself … I have a friend I have to remember every time I’m ready to throw yams, who has to produce on command like I do.

And that’s the thing, our jobs ARE deadline-driven. We already have plenty. The extra stuff thrown in there cannot, then, be as urgent as the urgent stuff. And that’s the problem — it’s usually MORE urgent. Or, at least, it becomes a crisis because Urgent is Everywhere and Nothing Can Be Moved to the Non-Urgent List.

What irks the fuck out of me more than the deadlines themselves is that at least once a month, I stay awake all night to finish something that is Beyond the Realm of the Job. Whether I’ve worked all night or I only got two hours of sleep because of the stress, I bust my ass to turn my shit in.

And then there’s always someone I have to go through who doesn’t share that ethic. Who not only goes to lunch but who dares to take a vacation day or work on other stuff, stuff that is NOT what I ran my health into the ground for.

I don’t get to take time off. And I have a lot of non-job-related functions that HAVE to take priority, too because KEEPING money is just as important as making it. So I’m lucky that nobody really gives me too much grief when I miss their occasionally lofty deadlines.

But man, just once I would like to not be operating in a state of absolute and utter crisis, every minute of every day.

Angry kitty is no longer angry

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn

A long time ago, as part of Fat Kid Syndrome no doubt, I gave up caring whether people were talking about me. Which, I know they are. But I like to think my awesomeness is so blinding that they cannot see anything else, and they simply marvel at my deity-ness.

Anyway, I passed two people in the hallway today, and when they thought I was out of earshot, one said to the other, “She seems like one of the sweetest people ever put on this earth.”

That made me so happy. People I don’t know, who I just say hello to in passing, having a kind word to say with absolutely no motive or even reason for saying it.

I realize I don’t get invited a lot of places because I’m not part of a “couple,” nor would I ever dare bring a male around my friends who was anything more than a friend.

Because, you know. married/coupled-off women don’t trust single gals and men are too scared to ask for their balls out of their wives’ purses to have a normal conversation with someone who isn’t their betrothed

And because well, I’m “couple” enough on my own, you know? I have a big enough personality that I don’t need to bring someone around for conversation or moral support when I’m perfectly capable of providing my own.

But boy would it be nice to have folks feel they’ve got me “figured out” so maybe I could hang out at the grown-up table with the wine instead of being let home with the babysitter and a sippy cup.

Or maybe being coupled-off still wouldn’t elevate me in anyone’s eyes. I don’t know. I guess when I find out that someone found someone else to love them, I figure they have to have some redeeming qualities I might not be seeing.

Which is why I love when I get complimented just for being me. I think it’s harder to be yourself than to try to be something or someone else. I’ll count this as an “I totally succeeded” kind of day, in that case.

1. Pumpkin bombs
2. Two of them
3. Apple pie moonshine
4. Old friends and new
5. People being classy enough not to wonder where my party date was.

Even though I had the excuse ready, it was really nice not having to explain anything that shouldn’t be my problem in the first place.

I have SO MUCH WORK TO DO tonight it isn’t funny. I’ve been trying to leave every night between 7 and 7:30, so it’s my own fault for not just moving in and burning myself out more.

Sometimes I assume everyone knows what’s running through my head; other times I say it.

I often think it’s the little things that drive me crazy. The “oh hey we should all do lunch tomorrow” and everyone does lunch without you.

But they become the big things. Rather, when you have no control over the big things, the little ones can drive you BATSHIT.

Or like another time when they said let’s meet for lunch and they all met outside and nobody thought that information would be relevant to me.

Not that I get lunch out more than once a month anyway. But still.

And I know people have their favorites. Like, when three of you are in a room and one can only look at the other person even when I am trying to impart my wisdomy pearls, I notice these things.

I often dismiss it as the other person just being clueless. I also often entertain whether they DO know what they’re doing, because I’m all too familiar with those kinds of intentional antics.

And today as I was looking up passages about suffering fools gladly, the phrase “Fat Kid Syndrome” rained down on me. That is, the expectation that everyone should love me because I’m the smartest person in the room. But the understanding, as it were, that nobody gives a shit whether you live or die if you’re not the skinniest person in the room.

Today one of my boys was mad at me because I didn’t rush his 20,000 word project out the door within an hour of receiving it. Between editing, proofing, layout, design, photo editing and posting to the Web (all me, baby), it took a little while WHAT WITH OTHER FULL-TIME-PLUS work.

So OK fine, judge me on my performance there. It was a communication snafu, anyway, assuming that because I regularly pull off miracles that I had an extra miracle in me this week. That’s not Syndrome-related.

But feeling like if someone else would have done the same thing — or worse, as I’ve seen myriad times — and not heard a blessed peep about it, that’s the Syndrome in action.

I’m not saying I’m suffering it directly. But every time someone prefers someone else’s company or opinion or face to look at, whether in a group of friends or colleagues, there’s always that tiny voice that wonders … if I just looked different … would they recognize that I am freaking amazing?

Or do they realize it and prefer to ignore it, whatever excuse makes the most sense to them, whether it’s disapproval of size or fear of not measuring up if my measurements were different?

And will I ever shake it, no matter how many pounds I lose?

People need to stop pretending they’re going to prove me wrong … and then willfully proving me right.

I really need to start writing some of this stuff down again. Because I wouldn’t believe it if I remembered it EXACTLY AS IT HAPPENED without written proof.

So, I miss D.C. so bad I can’t stand it. And that makes a day like today, with the terrible shooting at Navy Yard, break my heart for the city where I left that heart behind.

I’ve been going back and forth about some stuff at work that has gotten me upset. I try to stay quiet and keep the peace, remembering that Things Could Be Worse. After all, at least a disgruntled ex-employee didn’t return to shoot up the place. At least we’re not on furlough. Insert every “at least” you can after today’s tragic events.

But I don’t want to die sad and hurt, either. I just keep thinking that if I stay in peace, remain quiet and pray to God to take care of me, He will. But I also know that staying quiet and pretending certain things don’t absolutely ruin me, well, ends up being what ruins me.

Finally had a good weigh-in today. Down 3.5 pounds. And this after eating at Famous Dave’s, Golden Corral (shut up, the breakfast bar is the bomb) and my favorite Indian buffet. And after four beers last night.

What can I say? I let myself enjoy my life a little bit, and a happy Goddess equals a happy Goddess on the scale!

It was another week for the record books. I’d say the Guinness books but it was more like Magic Hat, Purple Haze, Rose Gaarden and Stella than Guinness. This week, anyway.

So, I have been feeling more like myself for the past few days. I rediscovered what it was like to spend time with a man who touches me and acts like he knows me. I got used to being at arm’s length from someone. I stopped craving the affection because I was never going to get it from a certain someone.

Nothing else to add to that. I do want to go back to the de-pudgification success, though.

This week, lifetime members shared their journeys. And the mom of a mother-and-daughter pair I never really liked very much shared her story. And … I suddenly like them. A lot.

Basically the room is full of people who have been on and off the program forever … people who had super success the first time around (like I did) who are having a slow and basically frustrating and horrible time this time around (like I am).

The a-ha moment I got was that I was so damn successful the first time because I was BORING. I ate a Fiber One bar for breakfast every day. I had a salad for lunch every day. I had a Smart Ones meal for dinner every day. I didn’t drink. I didn’t have fun. I didn’t miss a meeting and I didn’t ENJOY it at all.

This time, I didn’t realize what I’m doing till one of the blue-hairs said it. She’s doing this for LIFE now. She’s not saying, OK, I have X number of pounds to take off and I have to DO IT RIGHT THIS SECOND. It has taken her a year to take off 50 pounds and she has 10 more to go to get back to the Lifetime goal she achieved 25 years ago.

She did the same thing I did — made it a MISSION the first time around. And this time, she is basically making life as manageable and as flavorful as possible. At her own rate. In her own way. Mess-ups and all.

I never messed up the first time around. I might have said I did, to excuse a scale fail. But even this time, I would never say I messed up per se … I just have weeks where I’m “better” than others. I might simply choose to have beer for dinner or a plate of burnt ends for lunch instead of a boring salad.

But I found that shocking my system with oils and sauces and OH I DUNNO, FLAVORS helps tremendously. Variety, man. That’s what it’s all about.

Sometimes you gotta move on to move up. Or, in scale world, to move down.

As for moving on, cryptic bullshit ahead: I don’t know if I’m ever going to love or want someone as much as I did him. But that’s the thing about life. Just when you think you’ve run out of chances, you get another opportunity to reinvent yourself. And with the gift of hindsight, you realize God was just trying to help you see what you want … and what you crave … so that you don’t have to compromise and live without it next time around.

BACON.

Other than “I stayed up all night over a week ago to produce this and I’ve been waiting for help/approval on some things and I got busy with even-more-urgent stuff and OMG SQUIRREL,” this should shed some light on A Lot of Things.

Employees who experienced frequent interruptions reported 9% higher rates of exhaustion — almost as big as the 12% increase in fatigue caused by oversize workloads, according to a survey of 252 working adults published recently in the International Journal of Stress Management. Interruptions also sparked a 4% increase in physical ailments such as migraines or backaches, says the study.

Error rates skyrocket after interruptions. Participants in a recent 300-person study were asked to perform a sequence of computer tasks, such as identifying with a keystroke whether a letter was closer to the start or the end of the alphabet. After even a brief interruption of about 2.8 seconds, when they were asked to type two letters, the subjects made twice as many errors, says the study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

“Two seconds is long enough to make people lose the thread,” says Erik Altmann, a psychology professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, and the study’s lead author.

To make matters worse, it takes more than 25 minutes, on average, to resume a task after being interrupted. After resuming a complex task such as design or programming, says Tom DeMarco, co-author of “Peopleware,” a book on productivity now in its third edition, it takes an additional 15 minutes to regain the same intense focus or “flow” as before the interruption, based on an 800-employee study for the book.

— The Biggest Office Interruptions Are …

12 years have passed, and what has changed?

Five states, five jobs and five apartments later, in my world you can say a lot has changed.

But after a miserably long commute, doubled in length by accidents I was mercifully not a part of and filled with not-so-sunshiney thoughts, I can’t say much is different.

I still work too hard in hopes of being recognized and rewarded. I still feel absolutely burned out and under-appreciated and unnoticed and expected to just keep giving, giving, giving till it hurts under the assumption that more is going to magically regenerate from within me.

Someone at another company said to me the other day that her team is motivated because they see a possibility of getting a bonus. And I’m like, Jesus Christ. I have been working around the clock and I’m out of steam as we close in on will-we-or-won’t-we on the bonus front.

I left a job I loved after working 100-hour weeks for a year didn’t result in a bonus. I might have stayed had I not had an opportunity to go. But … the company never did end up recovering financially.

The same can be said of the next two companies I joined. I gave gave gave and they took took took.

I don’t want that to happen again. I don’t want to reach that level of disengagement that I just can’t do it anymore. I just don’t see an opportunity to gather back my strength without fear of … well, everything.

It could very well be 2001 in my world. I have the same car, same 30 pounds I need to lose, same inability/lack of wanting to hold down a relationship, same … yearning. But for what, I still have no idea.

Every day is That Day. The details of what happened have faded, but the outline of what hasn’t continues to loom large.

I had a near-death experience today. Or, at least, I felt like it.

I finally got some help around these parts. And I was on the phone training this person. And I was stressing, over and over again, to the point of being annoying, to check and double-check and triple-check and please don’t ever think that you can check too often.

I even said it out loud, if there’s even a 1% chance that you could send the right file to the wrong list, triple-check yourself before you hit the “send” button.

And genius here? Sent the right file to the wrong list.

The second I hit the “send” button, I had that horrible gut-wrenching, “I’ve got to go poop all over my worst enemy’s desk” feeling.

Did I say that? Ahem.

Anyway, there are two cancel buttons, and I hit them immediately. Now, I’ve already been told that you can ONLY hit them within 60 seconds and, even then, there’s about a 50/50 chance your mailing will be halted.

Well God willing and the creek don’t rise, but I waited 10 minutes and never got a live broadcast. Success!

I’m all hell-bent on training this poor character because it is all that stands between me getting a vacation day or me coming in with a potato gun and shooting yams at everyone I see. Even though I could hand some of my work over to, oh, people more-qualified than me to do it, I’ve been told no way, no how. Either my person is trained or no vacation for Goddess.

Problem is, I don’t know how to show him nine months’ worth of hard knocks and overcomplicated processes (this is one of about four major ones) before my 21 weekdays of vacation expires. But I am totally willing to die trying.

Anyway, just had to stress-blog. I try not to do that here but today? I earned it.

Of course I went straight into three more things to be published (read: interpreted, re-written, the math completely overhauled and basically breaking the nose to rebuild it) and I have four more waiting. So don’t rule out a yam fit just yet. But it’s a little further away than it was a couple of hours ago.

At least I think I conveyed the point of “How to react with grace.” I hope!