Sneadwoman is All Stressed Out…. Me too.
Sneadwoman asks “when do you hit the stress wall?” “when is it worth it?”
And here’s my third question: How do you sort out the stuff that really IS worth it and give time to it when so much time is spent with the stuff that really ISN’T worth it?
Tonight I spent 2 hours at a meeting concerning the unification of our school district. It was time well-spent — the unification effort is a divisive, expensive and unnecessary distraction at a time when all of our resources should be spent educating our kids. Unfortunately, most parents who are against unification are also busy volunteering at the schools our kids attend. So tonight I missed our monthly Band Booster meeting so that I could attend this one. Now I’m stressed because I’m the secretary of the boosters, so I need to get the minutes for tonight as well as last month and get them approved. Still, I felt like I chose the right thing.
At the beginning of this year, my “employee job” got very, very hectic after being in a pretty predictable state in the past. My attitude was that we were in the midst of a once-every-few-years project and once complete, things would settle down. That absolutely did NOT happen. Instead, it got worse. Sneadwoman said it best — “…a roller-coaster ride of wildmen’s fancies, the inability to recreate Rome in a day and trying to stay in an informed loop…”
The real problem is that we seem to be driven at a pace that is unsustainable, but we ARE expected to sustain it. I found myself literally breathless on the phone today, because I was in such a hurry to communicate the facts and keep my group in the loop while staying in the loop myself, and that translated to stress for those listening to me.
It’s a form of corporate bullying. The message is “You have to do this because there’s no one else available and if you can’t do it, we’ll get someone who has the time to do it even if they don’t really have the background to do it and we expect this from you.”
I was supposed to be on vacation this week, but I’m not. Snead is stressed on her vacation — what the HELL? For the second time this year, the launch of a big project that I have been working on will happen when I’m traveling with Dancergirl to a competition. She deserves my full attention, but she’s not getting it. Not by a long shot.
Because…in addition to my six-stretched-to-sixteen hour days on that job, I have a business to run. And I have deadlines in that business and there IS only one person who can get that work done — me.
And I haven’t even made reservations or figured out how I’m getting myself up to San Francisco on Thursday. She competes Friday morning. My options are running out, which of course means that I will pay far more than I would have if I’d taken the time to plan ahead even a little bit.
Dancergirl is a priority. So is my business. So is my job. Everything seemed to fit together nicely and was well-balanced until this year, until the attitudes on the job changed from “it’s a short-term project” to “this needs to work or we’re all going to have our asses on the line”. As I said before, I work the second job for the benefits, because they are impossible for a self-employed person to duplicate and stay in business.
There are days, and this is one of them, where I wonder what the heck will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I’ve hit the wall, pounded it till my fists are black and blue, but that damn wall is still there with the hordes behind saying “get it done, get it done” (And half the time I’m not even sure what I’m doing is what they want).
The thing is, this isn’t just me. This is EVERYONE I work with, starting at the top of my little food chain and trickling down. And it’s unsustainable. We are not magicians. We cannot add 2 more hours to our day. We cannot spin success out of nothing, we need resources and time. We need a light at the end of the tunnel. What scares me more than just about anything is that by delivering this deadline, it will become expected of us as a matter of routine, and the pace is unsustainable.
I’ve deferred everything from haircuts to really necessary dental work, and at the end of the day I’ve got…what? The sense of accomplishment doesn’t cover the exhaustion and it doesn’t get rid of the piles on my desk and it doesn’t give me the extra time to visit my grandma more often and it doesn’t allow me to make a contribution to causes I believe in, like the band and anti-unification efforts without sacrificing something else somewhere else.
What we all need is to be more assertive. I feel as though all of us are devaluing our time and ourselves in the name of “making the grade” with the new guy. There is no one pointing out that the emperor has no clothes and the clock only has 24 hours in the day. The worst part of it is that I’m asking others to do what I’m doing, which makes me as guilty as they are. That’s the caboose on the ‘bully train’, pushing my bosses, who push me, who cause me to push others. And like Sneadwoman, I’ve not walked, found time to breathe, found time to truly enjoy these times. My husband, who is a saint (that’s a topic for another post), doesn’t complain. But he should.
How do we say “STOP”!?
