Thanks so much to the "Divine Miss M" for writing and sharing her very personal feelings yesterday. http://divine-miss-m.blogspot.com/ Please, everyone should read this post. I really NEEDED to read this post myself.
I wanted desperately to post yesterday and just SCREAM about how much I absolutely hated my job, but most importantly my boss. My boss and I are at times very close, like pals, actually even flat mates (we live in the same building, different apartments). We are with each other SO much during the day and night that sometimes I think we are married. It's odd. Every meal we have together, morning coffee, we say good night to each other, the only exception, I guess would be sex. (obviously joking!)
To sort of tie this into Miss M's post, here's a sample of what she wrote;
"When my partner does something that irritates me, which happens a lot because our personalities are pretty much orthogonal to each other, I try to 1. think through what just happened, maybe have a little whinge about it if I'm in a space where that can be done without goading him or getting myself into a negative spiral (i.e. online), 2. decide if I can deal with it now or not, then 3. put it aside if I can't. What's the negative spiral? That's the place where I keep going over things in my head endlessly without anything changing. I try to set a time limit so I don't do that. Why? Because I've learned there's very little in life we have actual control over, especially when it comes to other people. I've carried around a lot of anger/guilt until the penny dropped... I can't change the past. I can't change someone else's actions or thoughts. I can only change myself and it's going to be hard enough work doing that."
My boss has been irritating me a lot lately. His attitude, his priorities, his choices, his seemingly paranoid ways. I am just absolutely irritated with him all the time lately and I think that all these things he does or is effects me in some way.
I have been doing great with CR lately. Absolutely great, especially after my relaxing weekend at home. Well yesterday was one of those annoying as hell boss days. My food intake was right on the mark. I had packed a beautiful lunch, but did I eat it? HELL NO. I was harboring a lot of anger and resentment for him yesterday, went out to grab a diet Mt. Dew and grabbed a slice of greasy pizza with it. Now the pizza grabbing in my mind became his fault too. If he didn't stress me out so much, I could cope and eat right.
Ridiculous? Well it took me reading Miss M's post to realize how ridiculous I was being. I have to be able to separate his life from mine a bit better. I have to realize the mistakes he makes in business, his personal life, etc. are his and not mine. Although they may frustrate me, it honestly does impact my life either way. I guess if he chose to run the company to the ground, I would be without a job, but I am sure I would bounce back quickly or have plenty of fair warning and be able to move on, no sweat.
I need to be able to let things go. That is something too I am working on with my AA sponsor. I am at the very early stages of sobriety and have yet to really work the 12 steps, but I am eager to do so. I am ready to fill my "tool box", too.
Yesterday didn't end so bad on the eating front. Even with my pizza, I ended my day around 1600 calories, which I probably needed, however a bit more nutrition wouldn't have hurt! The two prior days I was around 1300 and April tells me based on my height and current weight, I need 1600 to stay healthy. I have lost a bit of weight again, bringing my yearly total to 21 lbs. I have so much to be thankful for.
Thanks so much to Miss M and to the other supportive CRON bloggers.
2 comments:
When I was in my early twenties and living in the US, I got completely freaked out by the North American attachment to the 12 Steps; it seemed to me to be an abnegation of my moral responsibility to others' feelings and well-being. It's taken until now to realise that there really is a lot there to learn from, even if the person in my life at the time who was ostensibly practising was (probably)... not.
I'm stuck in a bad job scenario too, due to my own apathy and lack of confidence to move on in a similar field and lack of inspiration for alternatives. Don't get there. Can you use your strengths and motivation from your CR successes to start building your escape tunnel now?
Boss in your building though. Ew. Tough one!
I had a lot of resistance to the program, too, esp step 1 (because I am not Christian, any mention of Higher Powers tends to get my back up). Living with a cousin who was doing NA changed my mind. After about the billionth time of coming home and complaining about the same shit again, he said, hey I grew up in that family too and look what happened to me, if it's that bad get yourself to a meeting! And he was right. But there are a lot of other ways to do it.
My moral responsibility for others ends at exactly the point where I am incapable of making a difference in their lives. I spent a hell of a lot of my childhood scared or bending over backwards to try to make things better. It never worked and eventually things had to change, like me not jumping every time someone so much as pouted. If it sounds like benign neglect, it can be, but there's no point to me throwing good energy after bad. Maybe it goes back to the idea of moral luck, which has been much on my mind lately with all the stuff in the press about the anniversary of the ending of the slave trade. I do not believe people to be personally responsible for the things they had no control over. (Like, descendants of slave owners going around in chains? Maybe to raise money for charity, but that's still weird.)
Alternatively there is the view that failing to reinforce an action will make it cease, as a trainer does with dogs. Ignore the bad, reward the good. By not responding to the mill I was being run through, eventually, the pressure let off me a bit. I didn't get a perfect family in return, but I did get a lot fewer horrifying phone calls and broken doors. So it didn't change anyone's life but mine, but that's enough.
When it comes to work woes, I sort of like the formula, you have your home, your job and your friends. If you like two out of the three, you're laughing. If less than that it's time to consider a change.
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