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Digging...
Sep. 30th, 2009 10:28 pmHad a good talk with my boss, who was as understanding and supportive as I'd hoped, about decreasing my stress level at work. This means narrowing my focus, probably to either tools-dev or courseware, but not both. I'll be sad either way, and feel less Awesome professionally, but I need to be satisfied with what I've done and quit setting myself up for burnout when all of my projects hit crunchtime in quick succession (or all at once). Red Hat can be a great place for type-A geeks, the kind that take ownership of the projects that catch their eyes with an interest that borders on gleeful obsession. But the flip side of type-A geekdom in an environment like that is that it's a kid-in-a-candy-store thing, and before you know it you've gorged.
That said, it's not Red Hat, it's me. I've been thinking a lot about the term "stress-addict". It fits. I work best when I'm adrenaline-powered. Or maybe just when I can make a show of how much I'm suffering, how hard I'm working. I'm still teasing things apart, figuring them out, but there are a couple of things I've been aware of for a long time, even if I've only recently articulated them:
- I have worked hard to take advantage of things I was born with that others never got. I can't just enjoy where I am because I feel like I have to compensate for my advantages. If I slack then I'm just luxuriating in Privilege, enjoying something that I don't deserve.
- Once, when I was a teenager, my mom told me that my dad didn't like his job. This possibility had not occurred to me before. She said that he wanted to be an archaeologist, but that he also wanted a family and went into management to better support the family. She only meant to convey to an un-appreciative teen that this was one way he expressed his love for us, but I think the shadow of guilt I felt about that has always been with me, and made it hard for me to feel right "just" enjoying what I do.
It is very weird to actually find myself looking forward to seeing my old therapist.
In news related to the other part of Emofest '09, if I make it through the night, this will be my first time going 24 hours without bawling in about a week. I've been teaching a distance-learning course (as in I control the demo machine remotely and teach via teleconference). This has involved me lecturing, putting the students on lab work, muting the phone and crawling over to my bed to cry for a while before returning to ask, "so, is anyone having problems?". In a couple of days I'm going to read that and it will be funny.
That said, it's not Red Hat, it's me. I've been thinking a lot about the term "stress-addict". It fits. I work best when I'm adrenaline-powered. Or maybe just when I can make a show of how much I'm suffering, how hard I'm working. I'm still teasing things apart, figuring them out, but there are a couple of things I've been aware of for a long time, even if I've only recently articulated them:
- I have worked hard to take advantage of things I was born with that others never got. I can't just enjoy where I am because I feel like I have to compensate for my advantages. If I slack then I'm just luxuriating in Privilege, enjoying something that I don't deserve.
- Once, when I was a teenager, my mom told me that my dad didn't like his job. This possibility had not occurred to me before. She said that he wanted to be an archaeologist, but that he also wanted a family and went into management to better support the family. She only meant to convey to an un-appreciative teen that this was one way he expressed his love for us, but I think the shadow of guilt I felt about that has always been with me, and made it hard for me to feel right "just" enjoying what I do.
It is very weird to actually find myself looking forward to seeing my old therapist.
In news related to the other part of Emofest '09, if I make it through the night, this will be my first time going 24 hours without bawling in about a week. I've been teaching a distance-learning course (as in I control the demo machine remotely and teach via teleconference). This has involved me lecturing, putting the students on lab work, muting the phone and crawling over to my bed to cry for a while before returning to ask, "so, is anyone having problems?". In a couple of days I'm going to read that and it will be funny.
