5Ws Wednesday
I’ve got nothing today. The prompt today is a dud (so is the one tomorrow) and I have no alternative ideas.
So, in the absence of something intellectual to discuss, I’ll simply pose the question, “What’s going on today?”
I worked for the first part of the day. When I came back from lunch, my coworker and my supervisor both had appointments coming up so my supervisor told us to just finish our days at home. I have no appointment today but I came home anyway. Work was interesting up until that point. We had our weekly team meeting and there were hurt feelings, antagonistic questions and comments, and the confession that there is a lot of stress for everybody right now. I got to thinking about that. I don’t want to say much about what I do for a living now or where I work, but I will say I’m still in the field of education and the stress revolves around students and starting a new school year. I understand that there’s a lot of work to do before the students get here. But I can’t help thinking that it can’t possibly be that bad. This is higher education, I get that. But maybe the fact that I was a teacher who taught and helped run the school before I actually became the principal and ran the school, maybe that’s making me feel like telling everyone, it’s going to be o.k., everything is fine, calm down already, it’s not that bad. But, in my position, I’m not feeling any of that stress because I’m not in charge of anything. I’m in a support position. Over the next few weeks, when help is needed, if I can help, I’ll help. Maybe there’s more to this than I realize, but after that meeting today that basically pissed off everybody, I kind of wanted to shake my head and laugh. On the other hand, maybe this is also a sign of…I don’t know, growth? Being able to look back on my experience and be almost grateful for it? Had I not almost worked myself to death at that previous school, I wouldn’t have this perspective now that what is going on at my current job is really not that bad.
I see my supervisor getting so mad and upset over people and situations and emails. I see those same things and I really don’t think it’s that bad. Then again, she’s 25, I’m almost 44. I’ve seen some stuff. Actually, I’ve seen a lot of stuff and most of it has been worse than this. I’ve dealt with it. Moved on. Perhaps not being in a position of having to worry about those things and deal directly with them is my reward. I’d like to find a way to insert some of my learned wisdom into conversations with my supervisor. I don’t want to belittle what she’s going through in her position, but I also don’t want her to stress about it as much as she does. Maybe when she and I have our scheduled one-on-one meeting next week, I’ll tell her she can ask me anything if she needs to. We do have another person in our department who is on a similar experience level (and age) as I am. I know she goes to her a lot for advice and that’s good. As long as she has someone she can vent to. She’s vented to me lately too, but more like sharing the “gossip” which is actually good because it gave me context for what was going on in our meeting today.
Hey, even if she doesn’t choose to share anything with me as far as needing advice, that’s fine. It won’t change how I feel about this job and the fact that I’m a happy clam being in a support position where I don’t have to make any decisions. I’m fine doing what I’m told. I don’t mind meetings like today. Other than a cloud of awkwardness hanging in the air after certain comments that made it kind of uncomfortable, I didn’t feel any stress from it. I didn’t get upset like my supervisor and the others that work on our hall. There was no anxiety that popped up. I still carry my as-needed anxiety medicine in my purse, but I haven’t needed it at work since I started at this place. I took it one time recently but I can’t remember what that was for. It certainly wasn’t work related. And for that, I’m grateful.
It also makes me glad that my job is nothing like Josh’s. He got up for work yesterday at around 5:30 a.m. At 1:30 p.m. today, he finally came home from work…30 hours later. In his line of work, things happen, and a response has to be coordinated. He is responsible for coordinating that response. The situation finally resolved around noon so he was able to come home. Bless his heart, I would have had to come home sometime last night. I don’t have stamina like that. So, for the rest of the afternoon/evening, I will be tiptoeing around the house and trying to keep the dogs quiet so he can get some sleep. Hopefully not too much sleep because he’ll need to sleep tonight so he can go to work tomorrow. I would have taken the day off, but, I’m not him and I know his job is super demanding. Only four more years until retirement for him!
Anyway, that’s the long story version of what’s going on today. The long story “short” version is that I went to work and came home after lunch to finish out the work day at home. Plus, it’s really hot outside and I’m not above putting on my bathing suit and going to sit in the dog pool outside while I read a book.
Leave a Reply