Adventures of a Human Being

Quite frankly, today I am exhausted, frustrated and overwhelmed, mainly in the working world.  Back in the late January and early February time frame we had two senior level project managers quit on short notice (both because of the exhausting and frustrating work load).  As a result of that my organization absorbed their work load with the promise of additional resources to replace the lost people.  Well, fast forward to the end of April and there are still no replacement personnel yet.  So, essentially two of us absorbed the work of two other people with no reduction in our already existing workloads.

Then, when you layer into it that, as an overall organization (the project teams, technical teams, and customer teams) we seem to be stuck in permanent fire-fighting mode, it's just exhausting.  You can hear the exhaustion and frustration in people's voices on teleconferences and you can see it in the tone of a variety of communications. 

Now, I've been through times like this before and I know that the trick to getting through them is to just keep your head down and keep swimming.  But, lately it has been difficult swimming. I need to roll over on my back and float for a while. I've got a couple of days of vacation coming up around the 10th, so that should provide some relief. But today, it's exhaustion and frustration.  I'm going to meet with my manager a bit later in the day and vent.  I know she's trying to get those extra resources (she's as exhausted and frustrated as everyone else is) but I guess I just need to vent.

So, let me pivot away from the work environment.  (It's always amusing to me how just writing down your frustrations. Those three paragraphs have helped release some of the stress, just that small period of time floating on my back.)

I've really got nothing to complain about in my personal life.  It has been going well enough. The heavy workload has squeezed some of my personal life out, but I am still getting some good personal enjoyment time - some good reading, some good movies, some good conversations and socialization. I'm even getting ample time to write. So, in that aspect, my personal life as a human being is going pretty good, it's just the work frustration that has a pretty firm grip on me.

Today is Friday however, so I have the weekend ahead of me and I am looking forward to that.  I am going to drive up to Fremont on Saturday and have lunch with my friend Ty, who I haven't seen in a couple of months.  I am looking forward to that.  I also want to spend some time minimizing (i.e. throwing crap away) in my apartment.  Strange, but there always seems to be "more stuff". It's like I have a teleporter in the closet that mysteriously makes stuff appear.

I Am Human and Attached

I watched the season finales of Dexter and Homeland today. Both of them are awesome television - it is pretty amazing what can be done with the medium these days.  However, I always say that with the immediate caveat of - whatever you like on TV, rest assured that for someone else it's the stupidest thing they've ever seen.  For what it is worth though, for my money, Dexter and Homeland are as good as it gets though.

It was  typical Monday at work - I managed to get some things accomplished and then lost the bubble of the day to unfolding events.  One of the skill-sets I possess is complex data retrieval and analysis for legal investigations.  It is an interesting skill set and I enjoy the investigative aspect of it.  I do find it frustrating that it is always "oh my god, we need to know the answer to this right away" - so, it is complex requests on short lead time. I lost a good part of the day to that sort of event today.

Dinner was a simple cheeseburger and onion rings, in large part because I was too lazy to cook when I got home tonight.  Then, I ended up spending most of the evening on family phone calls.  Two under my belt, my nephew in the hospital and my step-dad out at the ranch. I am going to try one more in a couple of minutes - my mom was napping when my step-dad called earlier, so I promised to try and call back a little later.

My nephew is starting the slow approach to the runway to get out of the hospital and the question is rising up where he is going to land as an initial destination.  That is a discussion that has the chance to become heated, in part because, like most family things, it is one thing layered on top of many layers of other things. That is going to make some stressful days ahead, so I am going to have to practice compassion for all beings. I have to keep practicing it because I am definitely not good at it.  I am human and attached.

The Memory of Other Wounds

As I walked down the hall this morning I was thinking about suffering. I was thinking about the wounds we get as we go through this life, and about the suffering that we go through because of them. I think that most of the rooms we end up with in life are accidental or incidental. Yes, we definitely get some that are intentional, but, at least in my life, those have been the exception rather than the rule.

This whole "being a human being" is not an easy thing. By being human, we know that there is going to be some suffering that comes with the territory and, short of the spiritual enlightenment that frees us from our suffering, we're going to go through those experiences.

How we react to that suffering, to those wounds, is part of what shapes us. As I drove in this morning, then as I walked down the hallway and sat here in my office preparing for work, I reflected on our ability, as human beings, when wounded, to reach over and put our thumb on the wound and press down! We can, in our minds, intentionally make the suffering we are experiencing in any given moment worse. Why do we do that? What purpose does it serve? What is the function of this human trait?

As usual, I don't have the answer to these questions. But, I can definitely attest that as I drove into work this morning and as I walked down the hall, I had my thumb pressed into my wounds, while my mind conjured up the memories of other wounds.
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