I respond to job stress by looking for a way to change the situation. In the past this has led to cross-country moves to new job situations. If moving to a new job situation eliminated the stress and I was able to stay in the new situation for as long as I wanted this would be an okay response. However, the mere fact that I moved cross-country 3 times in less than 3 years is an indication that a new job isn’t the answer.
So I have spent a lot of time and energy recently to understand my current work situation, so I could deal with the real issues and not just the surface stress. I feel that I have been moderately successful in this endeavor. However there are still moments of stress that prod me into wanting a change.
The stress energy builds in me until I need an outlet. I’m talking about little day-to-day occurrences that taken individually are hardly worth mentioning. Taken one after the other they begin to wear me down, eventually my stress level is high without any one thing to point at and say, ’this is responsible.’ I am left feeling like I am over reacting and as a consequence I shove the stress down into my emotional piggy bank without giving it expression. Naturally it earns interest in that bank, and when I finally withdraw it, I over react in a way that maybe harmful to me and my family.
For a number of years I worked out in the martial arts and the physical activity there helped to burn off some of the little day-to-day stresses. I wasn’t dealing with the real issues then, so eventually it caught up with me. Physical release alone is not enough. But physical activity did help to vent the minor little day-to-day things in a way that was helpful. I have learned how to express my emotions openly and honestly in the moment, which has made a vast improvement in my responses to situations. However, I am still adding some of these little day-to-day stresses to my emotional piggy bank.
My current work situation, when viewed from some angles, is very much out of control. No ones knows what is going to happen in the next few months, and rumors are a dime a dozen. As much as I like to think that I have grown beyond the need to wallow in this atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, I haven’t. And, because these rumors tend to fall into the minor day-to-day annoyance category I tend not to express them like I should.
Without some kind of safety value the pressure of these little stresses will build to the point where I feel the only way out is to leave. What I need is someway to constructive expend the energy that my emotional stress piggy bank holds. I can’t work through this stuff with my coworkers. In many cases they are the stress. I feel badly bringing home petty work innuendo and rumor, for it isn’t fair to dump this on my wife. I either need to take up a physical hobby again, which, combined with my openness regarding my emotional life, will help to keep things in balance. Or I need to develop a new habit to express this stress.
This morning at work I packed up some textbooks I no longer use, and generally tidied up my area. The change this created felt good, I felt less stressed just by exerting some control here where I feel no control at all. I think the answer to expressing these little day-to-day gotchas lies in finding a way or ways to feel in control, especially when all the events around me feel out of control.
I have trouble with present and gifts. I struggle to get excited about getting them for other people, and I resist receiving them for myself. I’m sure that the root of this lies in my past but it is one of those issues that is hard to see clearly.
Over the Easter weekend, Michele and I talked about this issue, as it came up when she wanted to put together some easter baskets for my brother’s children. My initial reaction was one of resistance. I didn’t want any part of getting baskets and candy, nor did I want to present the completed items. Michele pointed out that I am a scrooge. As much as it pains me to admit this, she is right. I only strongly object to labels that are apt and fitting.
I suppose some of my reticence about gifts lies in the events surrounding my sister’s death. My memory of that Christmas tells me that she saw to it that I had a Christmas gift from her, even though she was hospitalized much of that December. I, in turn, had nothing for her. Writing about it almost 3 decades later still brings a tightness to my chest and hot tears to my eyes. I know that as a child of 12 I couldn’t control whether I had a gift for my sister. My adult self today understand the awful reality that was December that year. As an adult I can forgive my 12-year old self, but as a 12-year I cannot forget how badly I felt when I got something from her, knowing that I could never give her a gift again.
I have never allowed the emotional scar that was created at that time to heal. Every birthday, anniversary, and Christmas since has been an occasion to pick at this old wound to reopen it again. I have been beating myself up with this quilt for almost 30 years. I guess I feel the need to be punished and since no one else sees this need or meets it, I turn upon myself. There is no harsher critic or punisher than self.
The trouble with all this is that I have never been reflective about why I disliked gifts so much until recently. I have allowed my scrooge-like actions to continue, unquestioned and unabated, until they are deeply ingrained in my personality. My initial reaction to the idea of getting or giving a gift is automatic and occurs before I have a chance to question what I am doing. It has only been through the images of me I see reflected in my relationship with Michele that I have finally started to see what I have become. It is only through her loving presentation of my truth that I have been able to identify this ugly little facet of my personality.
Now the hard part is up to me. I need to intercept my ingrained response to gifts and insert a new one. I need to alter the neuron-pathway that I have built over the years to have a different feeling and outcome. The first step in re-programming it was talking to Michele openly and frankly about what I was doing and how it felt, to me and to her. The second step is writing this posting and setting on my website for all to see. For me, at least, the path to enlightenment requires public scrutiny of my motives and actions.
I guess I am giving my self a gift here. I am allowing me to grow and heal.
I saw a link to Revolution is Not an AOL Keyword over on slashdot this morning. While I wasn’t familiar with the original, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," I found this to be very good and worth reading. Read it out loud.
In my daily travels around the internet I stumbled across this transcript of the speech given by actor Tim Robbins to the National Press Club on April 15, 2003. Because of his position on the war in Iraq, and because of his wife, Susan Sarandon’s, position on the war, his scheduled appearance at the Baseball Hall of fame was cancelled by its director.
I think it perfectly sums up the dangerous situation we have in this country today. As Mr. Robbins says in his speech, “In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom, when an administration official releases an attack ad questioning the patriotism of a legless Vietnam veteran running for Congress, when people all over the country fear reprisal if they use their right to free speech, it is time to get angry.”
It seems that someone over at CNN.com goofed. Earlier today, for about 20 minutes, several mockup online obituaries were available at the CNN site. The errant pages were quickly pulled but not before copies were made and posted to the Smoking Gun site. Follow along as we bid a premature farewell to Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Dick Cheney, Fidel Castro, Gerald Ford, Nelson Mandela, and Bob Hope.
I have discovered a new game, called “Enigmo”, from Pangea, for the Mac, which you can learn more about here. It is a puzzle game that requires you control the flow of up to three different liquids using slides, accelerators, trampolines, and funnels. The demo version of the game has 10 levels, buying it released 40 more levels of play. The game allows you to build your own levels.
The graphics are superb, and the game is addictive. It is the best game I have played in years. One more reason I am glad I switched to Mac OS.
Michele and I have had the perfect weekend. After my long night Friday I slept in Saturday. Once I was up and about we decided to clean out our junk bedroom. Now that we are using his and her Macintoshes as our main computers we have two spare Window machines. By cleaning out this room we were able to setup a desk with a 19 inch monitor, keyboard and mouse. I’ve got a KVM switch, so both Windows boxes are plugged in and ready for use. There’s a TV and VCR there too. All I need to do is visit the crawl space and activate that cable port and we are in business.
Today we had a wonderful brunch at O’Charlie’s followed by visits to three furniture stores in search of a chaise lounge chair. We saw a couple we liked, but didn’t place and order yet. The sales woman at Lazy Boy was trying to help about 3 couples at once and we gave up before she got to us in the rotation.
This evening we grilled out burgers and hot dogs for the first time since last summer. We also had left over mac-n-cheese and some sweet corn. It was a fabulous dinner.
It is weekends like this that remind you why you work.
I feel as if I have taken the poison of my addiction and tainted my wonderful wife’s life. Before me she didn’t have enormous financial problems and I seem to create bigger and more dangerous ones all the time. Because she is married to me she is tarred with the same brush as me. How can I say that I love her, if I subject her to the pain, frustration and uncertainty that I seem to need?
I know that I have a very serious problem in that I am addicted to situations that are dangerous to me. Situations that have humiliating or dire consequences. Not paying my bills on time, not keeping up with my taxes. Serious problems with serious consequences. I have run afoul of these problems before. I have been served papers in order to get me to pay off debt. I have had my electricity and gas turned off, more than once. I have been without cable and phone service. And yet I still manufacture these kinds of problems for myself.
I know that no one does something repeatedly unless they are getting something from it. As sick as this sounds, I know that some part of me gets off on having continual chaos and insurmountable difficulties in my life. Last weekend, with the help of Michele, I was finally able to break down some of the barriers I have erected around this feature of my personality. By keeping it hidden, even from myself, I could pretend to have a normal life. Outwardly I seem to be getting along just like everyone else. Inwardly I am lost and confused.
Even having admitted that I have a seriously bent aspect to my personality, I still find myself ignoring reality and thinking about how wonderful it will be when a miracle happens and everything is okay again. I keep imagining winning the lottery or inheriting the money I need to get out of the current hole. I know that even if someone donated the money I needed, that the real problem would still exist.
In my view of the metaphysical world I believe that we are here to learn lessons, some harder than others. If you refuse to get a particular lesson through your life’s events, it is repeated again and again, each time with more emphasis. It is obvious to me that I am plainly not getting a lesson here, and equally obvious that I am not allowing myself to even see what that lesson might be about.
Knowing that I seek out destructive situations isn’t enough. I need to understand what being in that situation brings to me that I feel I need. My fear is that while outwardly I don’t enjoy the attention my destructive habit brings, inwardly I feel I am deserving of this attention. That somehow I am unfit to be happy or normal. Until I can feel worthy of not having chaos and insurmountable difficulties in my life, I know I will continue to create them and gravitate towards them. I hate knowing this as I feel helpless to stop this cycle.
I want to feel loved and okay, but until I can tell myself, and truly believe myself, that I am okay, I know I won’t let those feelings be my truth. I guess a part of me has never believed that I was lovable, or likable, or deserving of praise. The fact that I get these messages from the people in my life has to be balanced by some huge bad. Is that the key? Do I feel better when I can offset the praise, like, affirmations, and love I receive from others with derision and scorn? And since I don’t get derision and scorn on a regular basis, do I manufacture situations where I can feel it?
Oh, how true this rings. And how awful it feels. I can see situation after situation in my life where I sabotaged the good coming in from others, with scorn from myself, so as to wind up where I felt I deserved to be.
I have met the enemy and he is me.
How do I defeat myself and win myself at the same time? I wish I could somehow cut out or destroy that part of me that can’t accept love or praise, so that I might, just once, truly feel good.
For if I can’t learn to truly feel good, then I am afraid that I will eventually want to stop feeling at all.
Grab your nearest broadband connection and point it here to download the full trailer for ‘Matrix: Reloaded’ due out May 15th.
Once you’ve got it, un-zip it, and hit play.
In a word, wow.
It has been an interesting morning here. The state budget address was given yesterday, and it targets consultant spending as one area where cuts should be made. Naturally this has upset many of my consultant coworkers. The one thing that I keep reminding myself as I listen to and get sucked into these discussions, is that the new governor has stepped on a lot of toes in his three months in office; his budget proposal is going to get hacked to bits in the coming weeks. So to get worked up today about the first proposal is just silly.
At any rate I have been very aware of my addiction this morning, and I have been taking very good care of myself to prevent it from running amok. I know that I will be okay when my thoughts and emotions come from my adult, integrated self. However, when I start coming from the old Mark, I can feel myself slipping into the its-better-to-run-away-than-stay-and-deal-wth-it mode. If Michele and I hadn’t talked this out just last week, I am afraid that I would be pretty out of control about this today. As it is, even knowing that I have a destructive tendency around information like this, it is hard not to start calling people and rattling cages looking for information, work, contracts, or something. Even writing about it gets me going a little bit.
So, I have been sitting here for a few minutes calming myself and letting my integrated self address my inner voices and fears. I know that I am concerned about my contract status here, but that is normal. I know that I am in a very good position to keep this contract for many reasons. I know that this craziness happens here every year between January and July, and that acting on it is even crazier still.
Because I did the hard work to identify and own my addiction towards acting in ways that can be destructive last week, I am far better prepared to handle the swirling anxieties here today. I am able to step back and re-grasp my reality and let go of the rocks everyone else is grabbing. I no longer need to be like everyone else to feel good about myself. I don’t need to run off half assed because because of events beyond my control. I do much better when I sit back and validate my own emotions, than when I allow myself to get caught up in the storm of emotions everyone else is generating.
The sky is only falling if you are afraid to look up and see the truth of your situation.