Mostly, I have been working on myself. I am knitting for therapy, and that keeps my hands too busy to be typing. So, if you’ve missed me on twitter, facebook or my blog, that’s why.

Anyways, here’s a brief recap of what I have been up to lately:
- lots of knitting: I have been assessing my projects and frogging (“rip it, rip it”) everything that I am not more than 75% sure I will actually finish. I have been finishing things that have been sitting on the needles for a while. I have been starting new projects and seeing them through to completion.
- working: work has been a bit busier than usual lately, but I also have been avoiding doing anything blog/social media related while at work (although I am writing this post while at work, so I guess I should say “I have been MOSTLY avoiding…”).
- obsessing: as you may or may not know, I was not paying any attention whatsoever to my cycles BEFORE we started trying to get pregnant; now that we ARE trying, I have no idea what is a ho-hum everyday normal thing to happen in my cycle and what is a potential fertility/implantation/pregnancy sign. EVERY LITTLE THING sets me into a frenzy of “Is this IT?” And I hate waiting. I lie awake at night making “deals” with my body: “Okay, either my period starts tomorrow OR I am pregnant.”  Of course, my body doesn’t honour these deals…
- relaxing: this sounds kind of silly, how can you be busy relaxing? But in fact, I used to carry a lot of frustration and annoyance with me all the time, and I am making concentrated efforts to let that go. The knitting is really helping.

Recently, I have lost sight of some things and it’s time for an attitude adjustment.

The main thing that I have lost sight of is that I was hired by this company to work for them for 7.5 hours daily doing as much work as I can during that time period in exchange for a salary that I consider more than fair.  Lately, I have been spending more time looking around at my peers and comparing the amount of work they appear to be doing with the amount of work I feel I am doing and allowing myself to believe that they are doing far less than I am, and then further allowing myself to create an endless negative feedback loop about how frustrating and upsetting that is to me.  THAT HAS TO STOP.

Another thing that I have lost sight of is that I am in control of what kind of person I am simply by believing that I am the kind of person I would like to be.  Lately, I have been labeling myself as an impatient, grouchy, unapproachable person, and that’s EXACTLY what I have been behaving like.  If I believe that I am impatient, grouchy and unapproachable, I am essentially giving myself an excuse to behave that way.  THAT HAS TO STOP.

There are more examples, but those two are the ones that have been causing me, and those around me, the most grief.  I have a few plans in place to improve myself, my outlook and my behaviours but I know that breaking bad habits is a really difficult thing to do.  To that end, I am seeking the assistance of a professional, maybe more than one.  I have a physician’s referral for psychology treatments – for stress induced tension headaches – and I am also going to look into anger management programs.  I need coping strategies for the times when a minor inconvenience occurs; ways to derail my usual pattern of adding it onto the pile and allowing irritation to build up.  I only get angry and annoyed because I allow myself to get angry and annoyed.  As much as admitting that I have a problem is the first step, there are many other steps on the road to recovery and I am looking for a seasoned and experienced guide.

My usual pattern is to claim that anger, frustration and stress just “overcome” me, but the truth is that I create it.  THAT HAS TO STOP.

“Hi, my name is Erin, and I am an anger/frustration/stress addict.”

Lately, I have been feeling malaise relating to my job. I’m not sure if this is the result of the environment, the workload, the peer interactions or if I have changed somehow. I think it might be a combination of all of the above.

When I first started working here, I was on part-time nights and weekends. Within a year, I had moved to weekend overnights – and the shift was more of an on call situation, so I was allowed to sleep on the job provided there were no calls coming in. About 10 months after that, I started working the occasional weekday as training for when I covered for a co-worker while she was on mat. leave, so by the end of my second year here, I was working full-time days. I was offered a permanent full-time days position a few months before that contract was up.

Earlier this month marked my 4-year anniversary with my employer. I have never worked anywhere for 4 years; I don’t think I’ve ever worked anywhere for more than 12 consecutive months.

This job was the first job that I loved from the start and continued to love throughout most of my time here. It’s only recently, within the past year, that the glow has begun to fade. When I was working nights and weekends – and overnights – I was mostly on my own in the office. I came in, I covered my shift, I did all the work that came up as it came up, and then I went home. I loved that. When I was covering for my co-worker’s mat leave, things were a bit different. I was no longer alone in the office, but I worked solo on most of my projects, so I still came in, covered my shift, did all the work that came up as it came up, and then went home. The permanent position that I was offered is in a more team-like setting. Now I interact with coworkers a lot more than I ever did in the other positions. So, I come in, I cover my shift, I do all the work that comes in for me as it comes in; the difference is, if someone else is sick or on vacation, I might be asked to cover some or all of their work. On the face of it, that doesn’t sound unreasonable, and it isn’t. But, over time, my attitude has morphed from “glad to help” to “feeling overwhelmed and put out,” and I don’t like that.

I have never been a particularly patient person. I tend to get frustrated and annoyed way too easily. Lately, this has started to be a problem for me at work. I am constantly on edge and terse when people ask me questions, or approach me for assistance. I REALLY don’t like that.

I feel like it’s time for a change, but I’m reluctant to try to find another job. What if I go through the entire process and wind up still feeling this malaise? What if the problem lies entirely with me, and a change of venue doesn’t change anything? And that’s not taking into account any guilt I’ll feel for leaving my current employer in the lurch, so to speak. I’m not the perfect employee, but I think that I am a pretty good employee – at least as far as productivity is concerned, even if I need to work on my attitude.

This entire situation is upsetting. Most upsetting is the fact that I used to love working here. I remember loving working here. It makes me feel sad that I don’t love it anymore.

It is Friday.  No matter how shitty things go at work today, as Lucy likes to remind me, at the end of it all I have 2 days off.  Sometimes, that’s the only thing that gets me through.

Seriously, though, I love my job.  Things are a bit stressful lately due to an unexpected lack of human resources.  This is not the result of poor planning on the parts of those responsible for ensuring an adequate supply, yours truly being just one of the cogs in that wheel.  We’ve had a few people unexpectedly fly the coop for various reasons over the last couple of weeks, and we have not been able to replace them quickly enough for a seamless transition.  In English: a few people have resigned (or quit) over the past few weeks, and we have not been able to catch up in hiring new people.

Anyways, as previously stated, I love my job.  The current situation, while stressful in terms of making the job just a touch more challenging, has not diminished my job satisfaction.  I suppose if the trend continued for a few more weeks, or led to a situation where we went from short-staffed to under-staffed and it became impossible to get 100% coverage, I might change my tune.  There’s a feeling of accomplishment that comes from completing your task under less than ideal circumstances which just isn’t there when obstacles are insurmountable, rather than just difficult.

Meanwhile, I did put in a request for very specific coverage needs, and the tier above me in the hiring process is working hard setting up interviews, etc… so hopefully this HR shortage is only temporary and I can slow down to my usual hectic pace.

In other news, Boo-boo found 2 baby kittens – as opposed to adult kittens? – in one of her window wells on Thanksgiving and JMar and I are adopting one of them.  They have been vet checked, and they appear to be around 7 weeks old.  We babysat them last weekend – we took TONS of photos, so stay tuned.  By the time Boo-boo picked them up on Sunday night, we had litter trained them – only one accident all weekend.  Tycho got used to them fairly quickly, but Ping was still avoiding them completely Sunday night.  We probably won’t bring ours home for good until they are 10-12 weeks old, we don’t want to separate them too soon.

Apparently, people don’t want to read exclusively about my diet and exercise program.  As if!

Lucy says my blog needs “more sex, more swearing, more ultimate fighting…”  This sparked the following little exchange:

lilmissmasonjar says:
 This is NOT Spike TV, or FOX.
Lucy says:
 well if it were more CW I would read it
 HBO, I would be glued
lilmissmasonjar says:
 drugs, sex, murder, the living dead
 It’s what dreams are made of.

And speaking of dreams…

Lucy says:
 hey in my dream last night, I walked into a threesome in my room
 and I was pissed that I had to find another room to sleep in
lilmissmasonjar says:
 In my dream last night, I stomped on a spider, instead of dying it turned into a snake, and Tycho attacked it.  I was torn between wanting Tycho not to get hurt and getting the F*** out of Dodge.  I started to poke at it with a stick – the only weapon I could find, WTH dream? I needed a Katana – and somehow “cut” the thing in half, but it grew a new head/tail and then it was  2 snakes.
Lucy says:
 so my dream means I am old, your dream means that the solutions to your problems end up creating more problems

Lucy is NOT old, she’s like 2 months older than me, but she IS a genius.  She analyzed the hell outta my dream.

Yesterday evening, I was playing Restaurant City when an IM from Boo-boo popped up.  She was asking me about something work-related… did I ever tell you that Boo-boo works evenings and weekends in the same office as me?  Anyways, she wanted to quickly consult me about something, which ended up turning into a 30-minute long back and forth.  Without going into too many details, I had a plan to take care of something in the morning, Boo-boo saw it needed doing and decided to work on it, there were a couple of miscommunications with other people, in the end it all worked out just fine but it would have been a lot easier on everyone involved if I had dealt with it in the morning.  Don’t get me wrong, Boo-boo was doing her job, she wasn’t stepping out of bounds.  I really respect her for not just “calling it in” as it were.  I’d use more cliches – goes the extra mile, gives it 110% – but that’s just lame.  The point is that sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.  Yeah, I know, I couldn’t resist.

Anyways, I think I nailed the “more sex” with Lucy’s threesome dream, and the “more ultimate fighting” with my snake dream (although it would also fall under “when animals attack”); so I just need more swearing.  Hmmm…

Blerg!!!

There, all set.