Thursday, February 22, 2007

Tired of being a wimp

The last twenty-four hours have been stressful.

Sitting down to watch LOST last night, I realized that one of my projects at work was beginning on an incorrect footing. (And its schedule for proper completion is already difficultly dicey.) Needless to say, I was perturbed, but there was nothing to do at home, so I put aside the stuff I'd brought home and watched LOST, trying to put it out of my mind until I could effectively do something constructive.

(And then I was unimpressed with LOST's Jack-centric "tattoo-rific" episode. sigh)

Then I went to bed and hoped I'd get some sleep. Eventually I nodded off, but slept a bit fitfully. I woke up at 4:30 am this morning and I was certain that I wasn't getting back to sleep for another hour and a half, so I got up, ate breakfast, surfed the web a bit and composed a draft email that I sent to work, later to be sent out as the opening salvo in alerting everyone who needed to know about the "problem."

The morning was tense and I was sleepy, dour, and less than communicative . . . as my cube mates can attest, though I hear I'm often that way in the morning.

ANYWAY, no outside response to my problem email arose, so I moved through the rest of the morning, alerted coworkers to the problem at a weekly meeting and discussed possible fixes.

And then I went to lunch, sweet, sweet, uncomplicated lunch with coworker friends. The highlight of MANY a difficult day.

After lunch, I reviewed the problem anew, with some perspective and the thoughts of my meeting coworkers in my head. I saw that the issue was not as sweepingly dire as I had supposed Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. I sent another clarifying email that focused on the specifics that needed resolution and felt better. Some positive email responses increased my optimism. Everything isn't completely fixed (far from it) but a solution is being devised and a way out of the mess is achievable.

So, good for me on that.

BUT, it was reinforced today, as it often is, that I beat myself up needlessly and far too often. Lynda and I talk of this failing in ourselves frequently and point to it as our number one weakness. True, it also helps to be a bit of a motivating factor in our lives, but it causes too much needless psychic stress.

So, I've gotta stop being a wimp. I've gotta give myself a bit of credit and I've gotta stop jumping to the worst conclusion about myself and what I do.

In short . . . I've gotta cut myself some frakkin' slack!

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