So, this week has been interesting. I’ve been working very long hours (12-14 hours a day), trying to clean up a lot of outstanding tasks that are months late. In the past, it made me crazy to be late on anything, or to fall short on anything I undertook. It just wasn’t allowed – and it worked out in favor of my standard of living, because nobody loves an overachiever more than a company that knows how to put that OCD impulse to good use to make a lot of money.
I’ve done well by my employers, if I say so myself. And before my TBI in 2004, I’d long been in the habit of never tolerating anything less than my best effort. I was always locked on target to continuously out-do myself, no matter what. But then I fell down those damned stairs, and things started to unravel. So much fell apart — slowly and quickly — and before long, I was just happy to be getting through the day.
One of the toughest things about my TBI after-effects, is having to deal with sudden onslaughts of all sorts of mediocrity. I was in a meeting the other day, discussing a project that I was doing a very poor job of managing. The whole thing had just gone off the rails, and I was a little freaked out about the whole thing. In this meeting, we were trying to come up with solutions about how to handle things, and I was getting very turned around and confused, not connecting the dots, and generally not representing very well.
It was pretty disconcerting for me. I’ve long been accustomed to being one of the “with it” people in the room, but that day, I was definitely not. So, I stepped back and just let the other folks who were with it talk amongst themselves and come up with a better solution.
And it worked out okay. We finished the meeting on an up note, and I got some new ideas about how to fine-tune the way I work with other people.
It just wasn’t a very good feeling, to sit there all foggy and clueless, not following the conversation and not being much help at all.
I hate this kind of chaos. I feel stupid and dense and impaired. Right now I’m feeling pretty impaired, actually, because I am tired, I am stressed, and I need to start working on some of my take-home tasks in a little bit. I need to hammer out some work before the weekend is over — and my spouse is inviting company over tonight, to stay into tomorrow, which takes a bunch of productive hours away from me in the morning. Shit. Oh, well. Welcome to my chaotic life — that’s just how it’s been, lately.
Actually, now that I think about it, the chaos has been ongoing since before the holidays — since before Thanksgiving time, when the holiday scheduling difficulties started to happen. So, since around the middle of November, things have been up in the air, and I’ve just been treading water, trying to get things done, to precious little avail. Three full months of uncertainty and scheduling problems, holidays and travel and jet lag and exhaustion… and more.
It’s just sucked so terribly, it’s unreal.
It’s almost as if the people who are in charge of setting the stage just don’t give a damn about whether or not anything gets done. It’s all on us to “manage” — and if we can’t keep up and can’t meet our goals and get everything done that we need to get done, well, it’s on us. Nobody seems to care anymore if things are actually done. Nobody actually seems to care if things are left half-baked and fraught with uncertainty. It’s almost as though nobody cares about actual quality, as long as the “experience” people are having is acceptable.
Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but it seems to me that something should actually get done, every now and then.
I feel a rant coming on, but I’m going to step away from that, because it’s not worth it.
And here’s the crux of it all — I’ve been picking and choosing my battles, figuring out what matters most to me, and focusing on that, and letting the rest of it go. Some things I just can’t afford to get worked up over — things like sitting in a meeting and not feeling like I’m actually following everything that’s going on… or falling short on one project after another, and yet deciding to not get crazed about trying to keep up…
It’s best I concentrate on focusing on the good that I do have, and leaving the rest of it alone.
My time is much better spent on figuring out what I want to do with myself, and how good I want my life to be, instead of bitching about how bad things are right now.
It’s funny — I’m reaching a slightly different perception of my employer, these days. They keep taking things surveys at work asking about how people feel about working there, and every year the scores come back lower and lower. It’s kind of sad, that there are so many miserable people working there. At the same time, though, I think it has a lot to do with the character of the people working there. The fact of the matter is, we are responsible for what we make of things. All of us at work can make our situations into anything we want or need. We’re not helpless victims, and we have the power to control our attitudes and our gratitude.
And it occurs to me that maybe the problem isn’t so much that I’m working at a terrible place. Maybe the problem is that I work with a bunch of whiners. Thousands of them, in fact. They do a lot of bitching and complaining about just about everything under the sun. And I get really tired of hearing them bitch and complain about every little thing. It’s really up to us, to make things right — not to expect someone else to come along and fix it all for us.
At some point, you’ve gotta start acting like an adult.
I mean, geez, if people knew half the crap I have to wade through, just to get through the day, they’d probably run screaming from the building. But when you have to deal with it, you have to deal with it. The pain, the confusion, the fatigue, the emotional roller-coaster, the constant ringing in my ears, the unpredictable coordination, and this brain that just loves to crap out on me at just the wrong times… it’s just how things are, and I have to deal with it.
So, I’ve got a lot on my plate. And I have to pick and choose the battles I fight. The fact of the matter is, I am working with less working memory capacity and some pretty significant attentional issues, so if I get all worked up over things and I spend all my energy fighting against stuff that’s not going to change from me getting bent out of shape… then I just hurt myself. And I don’t want to do that. Getting a handle on what I can change, and focusing on fixing that, rather than spending a lot of time and energy beating myself up over things that are already done and can’t be undone, is a much better use of my time and energy. And it pays off in very big ways.
This weekend, I’m battling a bunch of backlogged work that I need to sort through. I’ve got so much to do, it’s crazy — and it’s all sorts of work, both tactical and strategic. So, no, I can’t worry about sitting in that meeting, earlier this week, and losing my place, not following what was going on, and getting turned around. Screw that. I don’t have the time. I’ve got to put my focus on other areas where I can be sharp, and I can be reasonably sure that I will make progress. Fine points like doing math on the fly and seeing quickly how a bunch of different moving pieces are put together… those are definitely not my strong suit when I’m stressed and exhausted (which was all last week — no, the past three months, actually). I just can’t let that derail me — I need to find where I can make up for those gaps, and concentrate on that — like just plain getting things done in the quiet and comfort of my own home. Like looking at bigger picture pieces of the grand puzzle. And keeping my motivation high and intact.
So I’ll be taking a lot of time this weekend to just settle in and do the work that’s in front of me. It’s not terrible work — I actually enjoy it. There’s just a lot of it, and it’s really disheartening to be so far behind… and have people at work complaining about it, too.
So, off I go. Got lots to do, and I’m feeling pretty good about the idea of having it all done.
Onward.
Broken Brain - Brilliant Mind 