Riches

Work has gone from bad to worse to unmanageable to unsustainable to unbearable. I’m putting out fires in ten different forests and fighting battles on ten different fronts, failing spectacularly in just about every instance. I don’t even know what I don’t know anymore. 

I had to read the riot act to someone today. I don’t know if she really took in the message or not. We’ll see. Grief, shock, and work stress are not a good combination, and I might have been overly harsh. Or I might not have been. This is a person who makes a great deal more money than I do, and who is not pulling her weight or anything close to it, and something had to give. I’m hopeful that she’ll get it together. 

The bottom line is that I am a support person. I’m background. I’m a crew member, not a chief. And now I’m a square peg trying and failing to fit into a round hole. Another mixed metaphor, and I don’t even care. Who am I? What is happening to me?

*****

It’s always better the next day. Work is not better. Work is an explosion of project management mess that I can’t wrap my head around right now, and so I’m not going to. Yesterday, I tried to quit. Well, that’s not really true. I tried to step down. I told my boss that I couldn’t continue in the PM role but that I’d be happy to stay with the project as an individual contributor. He wasn’t having it. Maybe I will try again later. Or maybe this will all get easier as I continue to lose my grip on reason. 

Kidding! Ha ha! I’m HILARIOUS. Right now, I’m at a neighborhood association meeting; or rather, ON a neighborhood association meeting, because of course it’s on Zoom. Fucking Zoom. I already spent 10 hours in front of a computer today, and so I’m playing fast and loose with my already dodgy eyesight by spending yet another hour staring at a screen. 

Sanity? Overrated. 

Eyesight? Who needs it? 

*****

I'm glad I turned my camera off during that association meeting because I fell asleep about five minutes in. But it's Friday now and I am wide awake. 

I had not one and not two but three work victories all in one morning. Things might be looking up. Things might be manageable. Or this might be the eye of the fucking hurricane. We'll see soon enough but for now, for the next five minutes, I'ma rest on these laurels. 

*****

But who cares about work. My son's friend's funeral is on Monday. I dread seeing that beautiful boy in a casket, seeing his family's agony and seeing his young friends grapple with the finality of the goodbye. For today, though, I feel very lucky. My children are here. I have their physical presence. I can see and hear and touch them. It seems like an embarrassment of riches.