Prep Time

Last night I went to a year-end celebration (fiscal year end, that is) with my work. It was an interesting chance to interact with people in a non-work setting - which I almost never do. I always wonder about this - why it's so hard for me to connect my personal and professional life when I spend 9 hours a day with these people. For a long time I thought it was more about them, less about me. We just had different interests, different lives - not a lot of common ground. And while this is true in that most have settled down and know they are on a solid career path (whereas I'm more or less flailing about in every aspect of life: location/love/career etc. etc.), I also realize now that a lot of it falls on me, and my inability to let my guard down and just be real about who I am and where I'm at. I often feel like part of my job at work is to be cheerful to convey that I'm in control of my work and everything is a-o.k. I shouldn't burden others with how freaking terrifying virtually every spreadsheet I work on is, and if I let my guard down too much, they'll all find out that I am completely unqualified to do what I do and everyone's confidence in me is completely misplaced.

I'm starting to realize that I don't work with idiots though - the fact that I put on a happy face when I pass people in the hall isn't enough to hide the fact that I'm deeply, deeply unhappy doing what I'm doing. I guess it's just a bit of a wake up call, when I, the one always capable of shirking the question, "How are you?" and immediately deflecting it on the other person, "I"m great! How are you? How's....?" can't do this because I feel like I'm straight out lying. And I'm starting to realize that there's only so long someone can take this feeling of being immersed in a nightmare of busy work and constantly trying to stay afloat - so much so that your brain shuts down almost completely and what used to be a pretty solid work ethic capable of churning out quality material has now slowed to a trickle - just enough to justify having sat in an office for 9 hours at all.

And yes, the above situation can more or less be translated to just about every aspect of my life right now...so something's gotta give!