Stress

Once More, With Feeling

Chris Leave a comment

Well, it is done. I’ve lined up a new job that I start in just over a week and I leave my current job in one week, on January 6th.

This is what I’ve been working toward since September, when I posted last. The job search, application process, and transition planning took up so much of my time that I didn’t have much time for writing. Even if I had the time, I couldn’t have written anything here because they would have crept into anything I attempted to write and I didn’t want to give any hint of what was going on to the people I work with/for (I wouldn’t put it past them to follow employees’ blogs to make sure we’re not bad-mouthing them).

But now that’s all over. I gave my notice weeks ago, transitioned all my projects, found new owners for my areas of expertise, synergized with my developers to maximize our returns during my last few weeks, and generally did a lot of Business. Now I’m coasting to my last day with a few days of puttering and trying to find an effective way to use my last week so that none of my coworkers are left with a mess they need to clean up. Then I’ve got a long weekend to myself (first one in two months, thanks to the holidays, business trips, and the stress of job hunting) before starting a brand new job with brand new people. Brand new opportunities around every corner and a chance to, this time, succeed in ways I never could at the job I’m leaving.

I don’t know that this new job will be better. I truly doubt it could be worse, though. This new job will hopefully leave me with more time and more energy to write. I can finish my book. I can update this blog regularly. I can do something with my poetry other than crystallize my emotions as a coping mechanism. There’s just so much opportunity out there when I’m not having my soul and energy drained every day.

I will be back soon. Probably not tomorrow because, tired as I am, I’m throwing a party for all my friends to ring in the New Year. 2016 has been a crazy long year full of misfortune, anger, hate, wonder, luck, and love scattered through the doldrums brought on by my job. I felt like we should gather to mark its end and remember what we’ve got to look forward to in the next year. Sunday, for sure. I’ve got a lot of stories about Dungeons and Dragons, video games, Overwatch, movies, and books to tell. I can’t promise much other than 2017 is going to be a new, much more active year for me. One way or another.

Happy New Year, reader. I hope you’ve got a chance to take a moment to appreciate the end of the old and the start of the new. Breathe it in and then let it go. Move on from what has been and look toward what will be. Pick your favorite cliché, really. As people often point out, clichés are cliches because they have a certain degree of truth to them that we can’t quite do without. So embrace yours and let it be for just this once. You owe yourself at least a little peace at this time of the year.

I Turned 25 the Other Day

Chris 3 Comments

You know, most of the crap I deal with on a day-to-day basis (both the crap that falls upon me as a worker/inhabitant of this world and the crap I heap upon myself because I can’t seem to just leave myself alone) really isn’t worth the effort of being upset about.

I get angry about it a lot and I can get really fired up from time to time, but I eventually settle down and get on with my life because it didn’t have much of an impact on the grand scheme of things. I also get really upset by it all the time. I try to avoid self-pity but it’s truly hard to avoid feeling like the world is out to get you when you’ve got a laundry list of unfortunate truths you have to deal with every day. Still, though, I’m only down for a while before I pull myself out and get on with my life.

I’m going to try skipping a few steps in these processes. I want to see if I can bypass getting bent out of shape over ultimately inconsequential stuff in order to keep myself focused on putting my energy where I feel it is important. Like writing. I haven’t been updating this blog much because I don’t have a lot to say and I’m often exhausted by the time I’m settling down for the evening. I also haven’t made much headway in any of my writing projects for the same reason. I spend all of my free time trying to recovered from just how whacked out I let myself get before correcting the course of my emotions.

It’s all very zen, really. Going to ignore all the pleasures and pains derive from this sort of emotional involvement in my life so that I can better focus my passion and interest toward what I feel is in the best interests of my future: paying off my student debt and writing my books. Since I started this on Thursday afternoon, I’ve noticed a marked decrease in the level of sheer rage I feel toward other drivers on the road, only truly feeling the need to swear at them or make obscene gestures when they cut me off in such a way that I’m forced to slam on the brakes to avoid rear-ending them.

I’m not really sure how well this is going to work, yet. I have a habit of coming up with these kinds of resolutions and abandoning them before too long. Not because they don’t work, but because I feel like I don’t need them anymore, that I’ve become so invested in whatever practice I picked up that it is second nature to me. Which it never is. If I could change myself that drastically in one or two months, I doubt I would still be as much of an anxious, stressed wreck as I still am most days.

It is supposed to help me focus on the good parts of the day and my life by not engaging the negative parts and by not engaging in self-destructive behaviors that feel good in the moment at the cost of feeling good later. I could really use something like this right now as I’m feeling rather self-conscious about my weight and I’ve had to face the fact that I might be spending more time paying off my student loans that I’d like, so its difficult to stay positive and working on my long-term goals when they feel so unachievable.

Well, I’m going to go play some Overwatch, finish washing my dishes, and eat some kind of dinner (definitely not in that order). And I’m going to let myself take a breath and calmly continue playing instead of yelling at my monitor that these silly little jackasses need to learn to function as a fucking unit and not just run around like they’re invincible so we can take the freaking objective instead of letting their dumbass snipers pick us off one-by-one for five minutes. The main point is that I’m TRYING. As are they. Hopefully, I can do better than they are.