I have come out the other side of my flu shot. I had an incredibly awful pair of days where I felt like all my joints were solidifying (the usual stiffness and body aches I expected from my flu shot were made much worse by the low-pressure front that decided to hang over the area for the entire time I was recovering). I did not have much opportunity to rest since I had to be in the office to at least set up the tests that were on my to-do list for this week. While I was able to go home on Tuesday after I’d set everything up since my coworkers were willing to keep an eye on it for me, I had to be in the office all day on Wednesday to monitor the next test myself and set up the subsequent run when that test inevitably failed. At least I was able to get enough data for the developers to figure out the problem and fix it. Now I just need to keep the test running and hope no new problem crop up, which is pretty easy work since it requires enough of my attention that I can’t really do a whole lot else but not so much that I have to look at it constantly. I can read stuff, do some research, write a blog post, or try to figure out if the last email I got was an actual scam (or a test scam by my employer’s IT department to help train employees on how to identify email scams) while I occasionally glance over at the readout I’ve set up. Every so often, I have to walk over to do a few things, but it’s really easy to divide my attention outside of those more active moments.

All of which has been incredibly useful given how tired I still am. For the most part, I’ve been able to take things at my own pace and avoided exhausting myself. Unfortunately, I was not able to avoid that today. The instant I got into work and had logged onto my computer, I was already getting a call from my developers. Sure, they wanted to talk about the fix to the problem I’d found, but they also wanted to talk about a marketing document we’re going to be reviewing soon. I did my best to juggle the useful parts of the conversation (that I struggled to pull out of these developers since they really wanted to go on a long tangent about the marketing document) with getting my software update installed and my new test begun, but it took a lot out of me. Just as I’d extricated myself from that conversation since it became clear the developers wouldn’t talk about anything but this document, I got pulled into another developing problem that I absolutely couldn’t help with. There was nothing I could do about the supposed issue other than encourage the person reporting it to write it up in our reporting system and he seemed intent on telling me every single nuance like I could give him the answer he wanted if he just talked at me long enough.

Once all that was finally settled and my test was running again, an hour and a half had passed. I felt like I’d burned through all my spoons for the day and fled the building for my daily walk in hopes of finding some amount of mental clarity after all that disruption. As it usually did, my walk helped immensely and I got back to my office feeling ready to start tackling the work I’d saved to do while monitoring my tests. I made the mistake, though, of leaving my office immediately to go get a drink to enjoy with my lunch and didn’t make it back to my desk for over an hour, when all the ice in my drink had melted and the beverage itself (a cherry coke meant as a small treat to myself for getting through a busy morning) had gone lukewarm. As it turned out, all those problems and more had been waiting for me to return. This time, it was the marketing person who’d produced the document who wanted to talk to me about how the devs I’d spoken to were probably mad about it and mad at her for it. While, of course, I was helping her deal with an issue with some unrelated thing she was doing that seemed like it was related to the issue my coworker had been expecting me to magically resolve before my walk. As it turned out, both issues were exactly what I’d said they were (before he insisted I was absolutely wrong and couldn’t possibly be right, so of course I couldn’t fix it for him) and just as I was finally able to get free, I got pulled aside for another discussion about the latest software version and whether or not it was up to snuff (it had been released to testers not even five hour prior, so it was far soon to say one way or another, but that’s not a good enough answer apparently).

Since then, thankfully, things have stayed mostly calm. I feel more exhausted than I have any day since Tuesday when I was limping around because that was better than trying to work through the pain of bendng at any of my joints. Whatever rest I might have gotten these last few days has largely been undone and I am left feeling adrift and unable to muster up the energy to focus on anything in particular for more than a couple minutes at a time. This blog post only makes coherent sense since it is largely stream-of-consciousness writing and a heck of a lot of editing the day before it went live. I’m ready to keel over the instant I get home, except that’s going to be super late because I’ve not only got to stay until eight to monitor my test (and because I chose extra sleep over getting in to work “on time”), but I’ve got to stop for gas on the way home lest I subject myself to another perilous drive into work where I’m certain I’m going to run out of gar while driving on the highway (the bad thing about being so tired that you can’t make yourself get gas for your car is that it only really seems to come up when you absolutely NEED to get gas). Only then can I pick up my dinner, get home, and collapse on my couch for a couple hours of video games before I stagger off to bed.

All the tiredness and exhaustion aside, I’m honestly troubled by the fact that I’m getting pulled into a conflict between my developers (who trust my ability to coherently cross the language barrier for them in discussions about projects, process, and why they might object to the suggestions of people they don’t believe know the software well enough to direct its future) and our new marketing person (who I’ve done my best to support despite her getting a job I applied for and who believes I am on her side because I’ve proposed thematically similar ideas in the past). I have worked very hard over the past few years to get out of being my family’s peacekeeper. I’ve done a lot of work to stop feeling like I must make myself useful in order to be appreciated. I’ve honestly grown sick and tired of being seen as the reasonable person who will ALWAYS be reasonable, calm, and empathetic no matter what has happened.

I do not want to be called in to mediate a situation like this. I do not want to be called on to explain someone else’s thoughts because they are too angry and incautious with their words to form a coherent argument. I do want to be used to provide legitimacy to someone’s isolated ideas because they couldn’t be bothered to talk to an expert about them because he’s notorious for finding fault with any idea that isn’t his own. And yet that’s probably all going to happen on Monday unless I stand aside and let everyone blow up at each other. I will be called on. I will be summoned. I will be expected to use my ability with words to find the common ground and soothe injured egos or prop up ill-informed ideas by polishing them until the legitimate nuggets of truth/usefulness beneath them shine through. It has all happened before and it will happen again. It has already happened again, by the time you’re reading this, since I wrote this days before the meeting and then did extensive edits/rewrite the day before it went up and I know how that meeting that.

I’m just so tired of being the reasonable one. I don’t necessarily need or want to be unreasonable or overly emotional, but I’m just so tired of being relied on to prop up emotional and unreasonable people. I do not have it in me to do that right now, no matter what that means for a group that has previously relied on me to handle some of the more volatile tempers. I do not know what will come from my silence, since it clear that this tension I refused to difuse is still bubbling in the background, but I know that I am going to let it happen. Even with time to reflect and sort through my feelings (and a therapy appointment that wound up being all about this despite me having other stuff I wanted to address), I still don’t know how I feel about all this other than exhausted, defeated, and pretty hopeless that things might improve eventually.