Up/Down

I had a bit of cycling today.  I woke up feeling pretty miserable - exhausted, cranky, sad.  By about 10:00am, I was chipper and giggling, didn't feel the need to eat, kind of reckless - not exactly great at work.  Cut to 2:30pm, back to miserable.  Headache, frustrated, bored, sad.

I made myself listen to happy music on the way home and take a lot of deep breaths and it helped.  I think this is just symptoms of the illness being brought on by shifts in my eating/sleeping (DEFINITELY SLEEPING) schedule this week because of time constraints, it getting dark earlier and knowing winter is coming, and also feeling a bit overloaded and powerless in terms of the whole job thing.

My moods haven't been drastic, nor terribly worrisome, but it does get exhausting switching back and forth which really just exaggerates the problems.  I wouldn't mind being in one mental place, more or less, for a few days.  C'est La Vie.

Ugh

Since coming back from vacation and being back at work (the whopping two days), I've realized precisely how much of my frustration and unhappiness has been stemming from my job.  I've known I haven't been completely happy there for a while and that I should move on,  but when I was just living my life and dealing with it day after day, I really couldn't identify how strong of an impact it was having on me.  But after coming back from vacation to find I am dreading every single morning and every single hour that drags, it is impossible to ignore just how bad the situation has gotten.  This job is not worth this level of stress and dissatisfaction.

I am not one of those people who lives for my work.  I never will be nor do I want to be, and so accordingly, I don't look for that kind of career or for a job where I will constantly competing at a cut-throat level to move forward.  That said, I am motivated and a hard worker and willing to go to pretty extreme levels to do a good job.  But not when it's not worth it - not when I'm being made unhappy by the work I'm in.

And thus, the job search begins!  Time to get my resume out, updated, and polished.  Time to juggle interviews around when I can get off work without creating chaos or suspicion.  Time to move on.

snap

My current work situation is not ideal, to put it mildly.  It's not a bad job, it really isn't, and in many ways, it offers me the flexibility I need in terms of being more productive or less productive as need be.  But there are a lot of things that bother me and frustrate me to the point where they become impossible to ignore. Worse, they are making me actively feel unhappy, dissatisfied, and negative. Even worse than that, I notice myself taking it out on people at work.  Not in clear defined ways, but I'm snappy and short-tempered which is the opposite of what I usually am, and as my job involves a lot of interaction with people, it's a bad combination.

I'm never outright mean, but there are times I react more strongly than necessary when someone is irritating me or being otherwise irrational. I don't turn into a raving lunatic, but I do lose patience and it shows.  Whenever this happens, I then have to deal with feeling guilty.  Sometimes I think my guilt is unwarranted because I'm overly patient and too much of a people pleaser anyway, so it's not a bad thing for me to be pushy or not overextend myself to deal with nonsense.  Other times, I can't help it, I completely regret my tone of voice or attitude the second that moment is over.  I regret it even more when I realize it's borne more out of frustration with my job or situation in general rather than the person I'm dealing with. It's not their fault I'm unhappy so I need to not let them feel the consequences.

Anyway, I had that moment again today - where I was being impatient with someone who was frustrating me, so I snapped at them, and then immediately felt guilty.  The frustration was warranted, but in reality, I was reacting to a series of emails from a supervisor who wasn't listening to what I was saying.  Ugh.  Instant bad feelings and even more resentment and unhappiness.  Bad cycle.

Then on the subway home, a stranger told me, "I just wanted to tell you you have a soft beautiful face".

Ok then.

Whyyy are you talking to me??

 Every once in a while, I have days where I really really need to be left alone.  I doubt I'm the only one.

During these days, I do my best to keep my head down and just barrel through the day until I can get home and be in my own space, but that's not always a possibility. I work in a pretty heavy face to face interaction/open communication position, so regardless of how I'm feeling, I have to be able to push it back and do my best to have patience and be calm when someone is talking to or asking something of me.  Even if the idea of someone merely saying hello is enough to make me want to scream and howl with indignation. I'm a people-pleaser so when I have days like this and I realize that it's my own issue, not even anyone demanding too much from me, I become twice as frustrated and unhappy with however I react to anything.

It makes for a super fun day!!

Today was one of those days, and naturally, I had three pretty major issues come up that had to be immediately addressed and all  I could do was pace myself.  Anything that didn't immediately need to get done got shafted, and you know, I'm completely comfortable with that. Yes, I will probably have more to do tomorrow than I would like, but I got through the day without being hauled away because I lost it when someone asked to borrow a pen.  Success!

Now I just have to hope I won't feel the same way tomorrow....