Tag: Stress

One Hour to Go

It’s 4:30. I have one hour left in the work day. It feels like an eternity.

This has been a long one. I am in the office today and I really wish I had been able to work from home. I really miss Jen today. I always miss Jen when I am not near her, but today has felt so much worse. I just want to go home and have dinner with her and relax a little. She has a computer hardware project she wants to do tonight. I can help out a little. It will be fun.

I am not sure what the problem was today. It has just felt like an endless grind of a day. That happens sometimes. It’s actually been quiet and calm, but it’s not at home and somehow that makes quiet and calm feel stressful. Weird, eh?

53 minutes until quittin’ time. I can make it. Who knows how long the commute will be. It’s pitch dark outside already (stupid non-daylight savings time). It’s 34 degrees out. It will probably be below freezing by the time I leave. I really don’t like this time of year. Blah.

Okay, let’s make that last hour of the work day productive. What do you say. Get some work done and then go home to where you belong.

ADDENDUM: Almost immediately after publishing this post we got pulled into an escalated issue for one of our biggest customers. So much for calm and quiet.

Stressed Out

I just had a couple of back to back meetings that I was sort of dreading. They are regular occurrences but I never feel comfortable handling them. I can do it, no problem… it’s just that I don’t enjoy the process much. It stresses me out in a major way. It probably shouldn’t, but it does.

The good news is that the meetings are over and I can breath a sigh of relief. Now if only I didn’t have to make up the time I was late from being stuck in traffic this morning.

Frustration! Really looking forward to going home and not working in the office again until next week. It’s crazy how therapeutic working from home can be sometimes. Even when the job is stressful, working from home is just less stressful somehow. Ugh, what a crazy post-Covid world this has become, right?

Stress

Why are things stressing me out today? Everything is rubbing me the wrong way. I feel like I am fucking things up at every turn. First my stupidity with the trash pickup this morning. I’m not even going to mention the mouse trap incident from this morning. That would just make me sad.

There isn’t anything specific that’s going wrong today, it just feels like everything weighs 10 times more than it should, emotionally speaking, and I am doing everything wrong.

What the hell, Robert? Stop being like that. Everything is fine.

Everything that is except for the fact that I am in the office when I would rather be home, and it’s friggin’ freezing in this conference room right now. Brrr, babie. I wanna go home and hug Jen and pet the kitties and play some shitty blues rock on the guitar. Those are my happy places. Those are my mental health medicines.

Cinco de Stress-o

Looks like Cinco de Mayo is going to be a painful experience at work. More like Cinco de Stress-o. Two customers with huge issues popping up at the same time. Lots of conference calls, all booked at the same time, and all right in the middle of my lunch break. Looks like a protein bar kinda day for ol’ Robbie.

Happy Friday!

Friday

I so need a vacation. Not even a vacation, really, just a break. Just a little downtime. It’s not happening this weekend. Tomorrow I have an MRI, a ton of house and yard work to do, a birthday get together for my father, and possibly a house painter/vinyl siding consult? A lot of the house and yard work will spill over to Sunday, though I checked the weather yesterday and it’s supposed to rain. At least that’s what it said yesterday, I don’t know what it’s going to say tomorrow.

I asked Jen if we could do something next weekend to decompress. I don’t care what. A day trip somewhere? Maybe? Just tell everyone we’re going away and then lock ourselves in the house and hide from the real world for a couple of days while watching bad TV? That would work. Literally anything, just so long as there are no deadlines or responsibilities or headaches or health issues. Just give us a break for a couple of days.

Next week at work is going to be super busy and probably pretty difficult. I’m looking forward to putting it in the rear view mirror, if you know what I mean.

I’m feeling okay today health wise. So far so good. My stomach was off all day yesterday. Today is much better. I even had a real breakfast today. Here’s hoping that my stomach stays on that course.

I want to take the camera (cameras) out somewhere one of these days. It’s still pretty cold in the mornings and that’s turning me off. Also, it’s always cloudy and rainy because it’s Spring in New England. Uh… just a couple of days of downtime… that’s all I ask for. Pretty please, universe… give me a break.

I’m an Emotional Mess Today

This week has been rough. I didn’t expect it, but three days of window project turning the house upside down has messed me up in a big way. Being sick on Tuesday didn’t help. Waking up at 2:00am with a stomach ache today and not being able to get to sleep until around 4:00am certainly hasn’t helped either. After eight ounces of water and a protein bar this morning I feel a little better, but the stomach ache is still there, just milder than it was.

It got to Jen too, and both of us being on edge lead to pointless, stupid arguments and I hated it. Hate hate hate it. I can’t apologize enough for being an ass. Then today, after very little sleep last night and very little sleep every night this week and being broken in general for days, I watched the series finale of Star Trek Picard and let’s just say… I’ve been following these characters through TV shows and movies since 1987 when I was 16 years old and watched Encounter at Farpoint with my father… I’m not ashamed to admit it… but I balled my eyes out a few times. I am just an emotional train wreck right now.

Season three of The Mandalorian ended yesterday and it was wonderful. Season three of Picard ended today and it was wonderful times 10. I am just a sucker for story lines about parents loving their children that are designed to violently yank at your heartstrings and I am fine with that.

Then on top of all the other shit going on, both home improvement wise and science fiction wise, I went to punch in to work just now and realized I forgot my friggin’ laptop charger in the office yesterday. FFFFFUUUUUUUUU! Jen bailed me out with a sweet USB C charger so I can get through the day. I just hope when I go to the office after work tonight the charger is still on the desk I sat in yesterday. Cross your fingers, kids. I don’t want to have to buy another charger.

Okay. I am punched in to work now. Everything is well. I’m being added to meetings left and right so it’s starting to look like a busy day. Busy is good. Busy is better than too quiet… sometimes. I guess it depends on what kind of busyness it is, you know?

Right. Work. Post this drivel and get to work, Robert.

Hungry

The last few days have been weird, weight loss surgery wise. I assume it’s stress over the upcoming services for my mother, or something along those lines at least, but I could be wrong. I’ve been hungry. A lot. Like, all the time. I’m not going too far overboard, but I am snacking between meals way more than normal and the meals themselves have been much larger than usual. When I say “much larger” what I really mean is instead of 4-5 ounces at a time I’m like 5-6 ounces. When I say I’m snacking I mean 1-2 ounces of peanuts or two little sugar free pudding cups instead of one. I stepped on the scale this morning out of fear that I was screwing things up and I was down a little since Wednesday. Not much, just a little. So I don’t appear to be ruining previous progress but… what the hell, Robert?

On a weight loss related note, I am finding myself oddly aware of my physical structure. I have bones I didn’t know I had. There’s one in my chest that I first became aware of a few months after the surgery and I thought it was a growth or a tumor or something. I told the doctor. She checked it out. No, nothing to worry about. That’s just your sternum. Duh. Now it’s my rib cage and my shoulders. I can actually feel the space between my ribs. I have no padding on my shoulders anymore so when I played my guitar the other day it actually hurt.

I added a new discovery to the list last night. I haven’t shaved in a couple of weeks. That’s going to change later today, but I was sort of rubbing the stubble on my neck and I felt something. Apparently Robert, your humble narrator, has an adam’s apple. I mean, I always assumed it was there but I never actually found any evidence to support the assumption. Now I can feel it.

Who knew, right?

Now if I could just shake what my mother used to call “the hungry horrors” and start eating better again. That would be aces.

As I type this I am watching season one episode three of The Mandalorian. The tribe of Mandalorians just came out of the covert to help Din Djarin and Grogu (we don’t actually know their names yet) escape the guild. Absolutely epic.

Shakes

It’s cold in our basement. My office space is in the basement. I am wearing a fleece jacket but I’m still a little cold. I have a space heater near my desk but I don’t like to use it too often. I sometimes turn it on around lunch time and let it go for part of the afternoon. It’s running right now.

Two hours ago our biggest, scariest customer had an issue blow up on them. It’s something that happens now and then and the case was assigned to me when it started. I got pulled into it and for some reason it freaked me out. I think (hope) I was able to stay on top of it and the issue is no longer occurring, but it got to me. I haven’t been bugged by a problem at work like that in a very long time. I can’t tell if my hands are shaking because it’s cold or because I am freaked.

Weird.

The take away here though is that it’s not happening anymore and I did stay on top of it and I kept everyone up to date on all of the latest as it progressed. I did okay with it. Why did it freak me out so much?

Weird.

Now I get to go into a 2.5 hour meeting and I didn’t really have any lunch. I snuck in a protein bar so I should be good to go, but I was hoping I’d be able to have a break during my lunch break. You know how it is.

Happy Tuesday, good people.

Relief

I was waiting on an insurance claim for my leave of absence from work in May. I expected it to be a formality that would be wrapped up in no time at all. I was wrong. I was stressing out over the open case the whole time and when I say I was stressing out… it was really stressful, you know?

I’ve been waiting for about a week now for the final document to come in the mail. Every day I was running up stairs and checking the mail box and every day I was left disappointed.

Until today.

I am so relieved. I am so happy that it’s all over. What an ordeal. Here’s hoping I never have to do anything like that again. At least if I do, I’ll know what to expect ahead of time. I won’t be this naïve again.

Sigh
of
Relief

Sigh of Relief: Imminent

I am not ready to breathe a sigh of relief yet… but hopefully it’s just a matter of time.

I went on leave for most of the month of May and a couple of days in June. My company set me up with a claim for the Paid Family Medical Leave act and hooked me up with the insurance company they work with. It was this insurance company that is supposed to pay out my claim which, when combined with some sick time that I used to cover a small piece of the time off, will cover my salary for the month out.

I’ve had some trouble with the process. Partly just due to time zones but also due to some miscommunication and some difficulty getting documentation moved from point A to point B. There was a moment not long ago where I was thinking I was going to have to jump onto a plane, fly to the west coast, and staple a form into someone’s head.*

This morning I got an email from the insurance company telling me that I had a new document to review. What could it mean? I clicked the link in the email and their site was down. Most of the work I’ve done in this process was actually done through an iOS app so I tried to log into that and it was down too. Shit.

I carried on with my day and around 10:30 I tried the app again. It worked. My claim has been approved! Huzzah! Now what? I don’t know. I started drafting up an email to my rep but got pulled away for some work things.

A few minutes ago, as I was going to lunch, I checked the website to see if that was working. It was. There was one thing that didn’t show on the app. They cut a check. Yesterday. I checked the mail, symbolically, but it hasn’t crossed the continent in the last 18 hours.

This process has been more difficult than I ever would have imagined it would be. The latest update to my account shows that the end is in sight, but I am not going to breathe that sigh of relief until the check arrives and clears. Please please please let that be soon. Going a full month without a pay check is so stressful. You wouldn’t believe how stressful it is. I really want this off of my back. Please.

*Figuratively speaking, of course.