Taking inventory and such...

Today I caught myself taking other people's inventory.  Gasp!  

If you've ever been in a 12 step program you understand how this works and how you should keep your nose focused on your own business!  I'm taking this quiet time, shutting out news and social media, to sort myself out.  Then I spent some time today feeling sorry for myself about the wrongs done to me.  Then I realized this is counter productive and I need to focus on the wrongs I've done and taking steps to do better.  

When I've struggled in the past some of these 12 steps come in handy as far as keeping your business on your business and getting off the "maybe they deserved it" line of thinking.  

Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

This one is a tough one but mostly I'm ok with my behavior, the recent public shaming of my daughter is a glaring exception but that one I admit to.

Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

I'm a heathen so the God part doesn't apply but I have admitted my wrongdoing to several people including the daughter that I wronged.

Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Once again, I'm a heathen so this doesn't apply.  I don't get a magic eraser but I do need to let it go.  I've done what is in my power to do to try to mend this.  Now it's up to my daughter to forgive if she chooses to.  That is always the hope but you shouldn't apologize with the expectation of forgiveness.  That is given by someone else and not in your control.  You need to do your part and leave the rest to the other to decide.

Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Heathen here!  And I was an asshole and sadly this won't be the last time I'll be an asshole but hopefully I'll curb my ass before I do so much damage again!  The main reason for going through this process, aside from making amends, is to learn and do better going forward.  

Step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

I apologized over and over again to my daughter.  Now I'm giving space and time before making another approach.  She's my kid so I can't just never approach her again.  Not an option.  I didn't point fingers to justify my crap - this fits my being goal oriented - so now I'm thinking this isn't such a bad thing?  

Time and quiet is helping me a bit.  Not crying at random times anymore or feeling quite so full of rage.  Still have moments of pressure in my chest and depression but I'm better than last week.  I hope time helps my daughter and helps her feel better again instead of so hurt and angry.  

Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

I did this since it certainly didn't hurt her to hear I was sorry for being a shit head.  

Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

This is the phase of the process where I am right now.  The part I'm sort of avoiding because I'm debating if dredging things up will really help?  I remember when I did this years ago it felt pretty good - I think - it's been a long time.  None of those things ever really go away.  It's not like a brain wipe.  But you can find some peace with yourself after the process is done.  

Right now I'm trying to figure out what of my past hurts is worth dredging up and taking a hard look at.  Since I've pushed some things off due to goals, some of them may need another look and think.  If I'm hanging onto something negative, it's serving me in some way.  I need to figure out what I'm hanging onto and how it's serving me to hang on to it.  And what to do about it.

First thing that pops into my brain is my work situation.  That was the start of everything in recent years.  It was a horribly toxic, stressful environment and I was doing some masterful stuffing of rage and hurt to get through the days as a professional person.  I was leading others or trying to, to show them how they SHOULD behave.  There was a cost to me because frankly I felt like punching a couple of them on a regular basis.  Some of my clients too!  

As far as my shitty coworkers - it's kind of stupid to hang on to those things that hurt my feelings and made me angry.  I don't have to see those people anymore since I get to work remotely now.  I need to let go of those bad feelings and go forward without them.  When we were doing the team building before Covid struck I was able to confront the 2 women who were being bitches to me and we hashed things out.  So maybe that's already in the past?  As I write about this I don't feel especially over wrought.  

I do know that it's going to take a long time before I'm willing to change jobs because I get to work remotely.  After the shit show in recent years it's going to take me a while to be willing to re-enter an office environment and risk dealing with psychos again.  So for that part of it I'm still hanging on to the hurt.  It's like a lesson I want to avoid and it's locking me into place right now.  Hmmmm.

Maybe that isn't good.  But I REALLY like working from home so maybe I just look at it from that perspective instead of a cautionary tale learned from a couple of bad coworkers.  Let it go!  

Paradigm shift!  

Hey, I made a smidge of progress today!  There is NO benefit to hanging onto the bad feelings from my past with my coworkers.  I get to do what I want without putting a negative reason on it.  I'm working from home and staying in this job because I like working from home.  That's a better way to look at it!

Now if my clients drive me insane I can roll my eyes and bang my head on my desk while I deal with them and no one sees it.  I can actually somewhat vent my frustration as I go.  You have to be professional and patient but holy gods sometimes people are challenging to deal with!  

I'm just happy I don't go around with a thought bubble over my head!  

Also, on a side note, I googled how to write a book since I've been writing my blog again and I got bored halfway thru the list and realized I'm probably never going to attempt it.  I do enjoy writing tho even if no one reads it.  But if a few people read it that's gravy!

Finally some good news!

Got a call today and no signs of cancer in the uterus or cervix!  Everything is "normal" that they've tested so far.  Now we wait for the additional tests in September before we decide how to deal with whatever is going on.  At least it isn't cancer!  1 out of 2 C word questions resolved 😀

As far as making progess on anything else?  Not so much.  I couldn't bring myself to call my mom or anyone about my current drama.  I guess I'm a little bit sick of it and want it to go away.  I don't really want to delve into the crap fest that is causing the simmering mess of rage inside.  I'm hoping it'll just go away without me having to pick the scab off it.  

BUT I did finally clean the kitchen floor and take care of a few things on my to do list that I hadn't been dealing with.  It's nice to walk into the kitchen and not feel grossed out by stuff on the floor.  These little things are good and it's important to notice them.  There's so much negativity out there and in my case, internally, that positive stuff is really important to acknowledge!  

For the time being I'm going to just take the break I've given myself.  I'm going to continue to stay away from social media and the news and stay in my bubble.  I don't need to know every thought or feeling or opinion all of my friends and family have.  I don't need to listen to professionals with agendas use their skills of persuasion to try to make me hate people who aren't just like me.  I'm kind of liking this version of "quiet".  It's not so bad.  

I figure I'll keep going like this for a while and see if any new epiphanies or ideas occur to me that'll help me handle my crap better.  I'm going to be patient.  It's also something of a cop out because I'm not ready to do anything about the inside stuff yet.  But I get to do that.  My life, my crap, my call.

I get kind of sick of my own shit sometimes.  I don't have much patience with my own shit let alone other people's shit.  It interferes with my goals of not being a mess inside.  At this moment I don't feel like a mess.  I feel pretty good about having a NO to cancer on one of the items on my checklist.  I'm going to savor it!  

It's weird to see that people are reading my post.  Not many, which is good.  I'd feel weird if a bunch of people were reading it.  This is more for my own therapy.  And when I put it out there it's like it left me and went out into the world, you know?  I don't need anyone to read it but I sent it out into the universe and also recorded it if I ever think it might help to read it again.  To remember.  

Oh, I did have a random thought today...that it's dangerous to rewrite history because history doesn't suit you.

I was watching some war movies with Ken this weekend.  Documentaries with old footage and soldiers remembering their stories.  It was fascinating.  

Then today I was thinking about all this socialist stuff the right is bitching about and a segment of the left is supporting (Bernie's peeps) and thought how people keep pretending that socialism will work even tho it has failed over and over again in country after country.  

Lots of things that happened during the wars are starting to crop up again in certain ways.  I know some of our history is painful.  Each person has painful histories of their own so why would our country be any different?  But removing reminders...is that really good?  Is it good to forget history?  

As I listened to the soldiers talking about how they felt back in those days they all said they felt bad.  They also felt it was important to tell their stories and hang onto the history so that their children and grandchildren would not repeat that history.  So that they'd recognize it if it started again.

I don't know if we're going down that path but I'm worried on a lot of levels.  I do see things happening that concern me.  The cancel culture is probably the biggest thing as well as the dividing of the people and the demonizing we're doing of each other.  

Punishing people for their opinions is a way of shutting them up.  It's a way of forcing them into line even if they disagree or are afraid of what's happening.  This is happening.

The political divide is making it easier for us to hate people by demonizing anyone who isn't like you.  I'm a conservative and I hear the messages the left says about me.  That I'm racist, anti-choice, bigoted, and a stupid hick (redneck or undesirables).  I'm against anything that isn't in the bible.  Being pro-gun means I hate kids and want them to be shot in school or I'm for mass shootings.  We're a bunch of idiot rednecks and shouldn't be listened to.  Not by the superior liberals who are "awoke".   

And I hear the messages about the left that the right is spinning.  That they're out to destroy America with their socialist agenda, they're anti-cop, pro-riot, kill babies, secretly hate other races - the white liberals that is - and are out to destroy the family (BLM is accused of this A LOT),  They think all white people have white privilege because white people all had it easier than everyone else.  They want to take all of the guns away.  They think social workers will do a better job than cops.  They want to create a country where the gov't tells people how to live and gives them free stuff, like health insurance, college, and welfare because none of them appear to work do they?  They have all this time to riot right? And AOC wants everyone to go back in time and kill the cows because they fart too much.  

So this is the kind of crap that I'm quieting right now.  I want to start feeling better about other people.  I want to stop looking at them sideways.  This shit is insidious.  It's pumped at people from all directions and it's pretty much impossible to get any information without this shit coming at you.  

This is rambling and it's late and I want supper so I'm going to stop.  Anyway, that's today.  There was good news so time to eat!  

 

An epiphany! And now what?

 Last night I was watching Parks & Rec with Ken and started having another panic attack.  My chest feels tight.  I debated making a drive to Wendover to buy some chewies but honestly, I don't think they do that much for me.  I do sleep better sometimes with them but as far as the stress, I think maybe it's better to feel it and try to deal with it?

Anyway, this morning I got up before everyone else, which is normal.  I made my coffee and watered the plants and sat down to play games on my phone.  My chest still feels tight.  I felt on the verge of tears again and yet felt angry for no apparent reason.

I thought about my daughter and the things she'd written to me.  I debated talking to her about that and decided I wouldn't because it would get in the way of my goal, which is for her to heal from the hurt I inflicted on her.  

A few moments later I realized something about myself.  Something key that I feel explains a lot of what I've been feeling for a long while.  

I am an EXTREMELY goal oriented person.  Ken (husband) says as long as he's known me I've always been laser focused on whatever it is I want to accomplish.  We talked about this epiphany of mine for a while this morning.  I often say he and I are the same person and since we generally like ourselves, we like each other.  But we aren't the same in some ways.  He's different from me in this way and I am very aware of it.  He pointed out an incident that happened a while back.  Here's the story...

We went to the mall and stopped to eat.  I was starving and so was he.  We ordered some greek food.  We sit down to eat and then Ken tells me he sees some suspicious activity going on and instructs me on what I need to do if he's right.  (Nothing happened - part of his cop background to observe and he does it well)  I hadn't noticed any of the people around me or anything going on because I was hungry and that's all I cared about at the moment.  This is normal for me.  Walking in a mall, I look at where I'm headed.  Ken looks at everything.  He sees things I don't notice all the time.  Ken is much more distractable and in some ways, aware, than I am.  It's a difference between us that works well.  I tend to pull us back on task when we're doing something and he tends to pull me off to the side to see things I wouldn't have noticed without him.

That highlights a basic personality trait about myself.  It's actually a pretty great trait in my opinion but now I'm seeing the dark side to it.  When I have a goal, anything that does not serve the goal is pushed to the side, stuffed and disregarded because if I acknowledge it, it could interfere with my goal.  If it never serves the goal it never gets dealt with.  

Take the situation with my daughter.  Regardless of how hurt and angry I felt about her facebook post, I can't bring myself to talk about it further because I want her to heal and be at peace because I love her.  No matter how much her texts to me after the post hurt me, I don't want to fight or argue with her or defend myself because I want her to heal and be at peace.  It's my fault that it started in the first place.

So now I understand something about myself that I didn't really understand before and now I understand why I'm having panic attacks and what I've thought of as irrational rage (which is actually a pile of rage that has been stuffed and has been creeping out sideways here and there lately) and why my heart hurts ALL THE  FUCKING TIME now.  Because in order to accomplish my goals I set aside other problems that get in the way of accomplishing my goals.  

I've been doing this with my job for years.  I mentioned in my last post how I was doing better with it.  I sort of am.  I'm learning how to walk away from it so I can have my personal life.  BUT I still fight panic attacks if I think about my job when I'm not working because of the looming mountain of work over me.  If a client asks for a status update I'm triggered and start hyperventilating and my heart starts racing.  I wait a while until I have control and then I'm professional as I give the status update that once again I don't have time to get this work done yet.

On Facebook I curb my rage in order to try to hear other points of view and to avoid hurting people I love (which is vital).  It's a good thing since this rage is actually a culmination of all of the painful, hurtful, stressful things that don't serve my goals that I've shoved to the side and not dealt with because I can't have my goals interfered with.  So now I'm fighting the rage and pain that's living in me constantly.  I'm fighting not to lose my shit most of every day.  No one knows I'm doing this because generally I'm pretty good at hiding what's going on inside.  

When I worked at the office I'd sit there feeling so stressed and bitchy and miserable but my coworkers would tell me how I was always professional.  How they never knew anything was wrong.  I can be a seething mess inside but people sitting next to me don't know it.  

This has become my new normal and it's gotten bad enough that once again I'm struggling with physical side effects.  The heart racing, fight or flight panic reaction and feeling on the verge of tears or wanting to physically attack people.  Tightness and aching in my chest.  Dread at the thought of interacting with people.  Dread at the thought of work.  A lot of dread.  A lot of bad feelings all piled up in me.

So now I know this about myself.  I know that there are great things about being goal oriented because it helps me accomplish things.  It's kind of an awesome trait about me!  But now I understand that there's a cost.  This is a struggle because the things that are causing these side effects get in the way of my goals and I can't bring myself to fuck those up so I'm not sure what to do about this.  

The current issue with my daughter highlights this perfectly.  She's angry with me for not fighting with her.  She says I'm dialing it in.  She said I put more heart into the mean comment I wrote.  She's right about that because for that moment and a while after, my rage came pouring off me in waves!  I was furious with her about that damned post!  

She's tried to hurt and trigger me, seeking a passionate reaction.  Instead I feel that if I did that, it would slow her having time to heal and feel better again.  I regret publicly shaming her.  I should have kept that private.  We don't have to agree but I'm really not happy that I did that in a public forum no matter how angry I was.  

If I fight back or tell her about my rage and fears, she might miss the message that I love her and am sorry for doing what I did.  So I push it all aside.  When I consider this isn't healthy for me to keep doing I still can't bring myself to address those things because it could fuck up my goal.  My goal is sending a message of calm, love and apology.  Not fueling the battle.  My drive still is towards the almighty goal being accomplished.  

I wonder if I need counseling?  But with all the potential medical things coming up in the next few months I don't know that I can afford counseling.  I need money to pay for medical things, not personality things.  

I've been feeling the urge to call my mother lately.  Maybe this is something that would help?  It certainly can't hurt.

August 20th

I finally blew a gasket a couple of nights ago and I did damage.  I'm not doing so well with a lot of things right now.  

2 nights ago I started a blog post and then got distracted by supper and went to eat.  I have been feeling like I was about to lose my shit lately so was writing it out to try to vent some steam.  I should have kept writing.  

After supper I was perusing Facebook and came across a post from my daughter.  A little background, we don't see eye to eye politically.  I put in a comment, basically shaming her in public for the post.  I felt so much rage and hurt right then that I then went outside to cry.  I certainly wasn't in a frame of mind to make good decisions.  This is my daughter and I love her and I verbally stabbed at her in public because I didn't agree with her politics.  Not good.

Ken saw me come out and came up to talk.  I'd been hoping to be alone for a bit to try to calm down.  When Ken saw my face he knew something was wrong so we started talking.  I cried and raged and cried.  I cried a lot.  Then I'd rage some more about how I hate everything lately.  

How I can barely tolerate this life I'm currently forced to live.  How I can barely tolerate to be around people anymore.  How much I hate wearing masks.  How I wish I never needed to go any place where I have to wear them.  How much I hate this social distancing.  How insane the world is.  How horrible politics are.  How poisonous!  My fury over how cops are being treated.  My deep fear over what's going to happen if we don't start appreciating cops and separate the bad from the good.  Trying to imagine a world without them to keep the peace.  My pain over the George Floyd death since I'd seen the long version of the body cam.  How it changed my perspective on the entire event and broke my heart in so many directions.  How I can't even stand being in my own skin anymore because everything feels so bad!  I feel so hateful inside I barely know myself anymore.  And then I blew up my relationship with my daughter.  Absolutely unnecessary and not helpful.  

On top of all this I have a father who is making some scary choices about his life and I'm trying to be supportive of my sister who is stressed trying to deal with him and his issues.  Everyone is coming to her like she's his keeper.  If only she or I did have a say in his life!  We just get to deal with the fallout.  Her more than me and even what I'm dealing with sometimes makes me want to cry or be angry or both.  I need to be there for her!

I have a couple of medical things going on and they could take some time to resolve.  The old cancer word is coming at me from a couple of directions but there are also other things that the problems could be - cancer is only the worst - so I'm trying to think positive.  I'm actually doing pretty well with this but I have to do some level of "what if" so I can have a plan to try to handle things if something does end up going south.  

My job is beyond stressful but either I'm getting used to this fight or flight reaction or I'm managing the stress from that better.  Maybe I'm just getting used to it.  Maybe not when I think about it because it seems like this is all piling on.  I have clients at me all day with their needs.  I can't keep up with it.  

I don't have much to look forward to.  I have a camping trip with friends for a weekend in October.  That's about it.  

If I go hiking my body punishes me (medical things).  Hiking isn't something I'm that willing to do until something gets figured out.  Last time I hiked in Capital Reef I was hurting pretty badly over it.  I wish they'd just do a hysterectomy but they actually need to find out what's wrong and then go from there.  So I've started a process that will take months before we even get an action plan going.  

For the next few months I have doctor appointments to look forward to.  Pelvic ultra sound to try to figure out what the hell is going on in my uterus and another mammogram to see if the little growth in the boob has gotten bigger so they can decide if we should worry or not.  The boob stuff could drag on a couple of years.  Or I could have an answer in a couple months.  

And then there's the politics.  I recognize that both sides benefit from keeping us separated.  I watched parts of the Dem convention and basically the message is that if they don't vote for Biden the world is going to end.  The Republicans are spinning the same thing with Trump.  That the US will become a socialist hell hole.  The agendas are EVERYWHERE.  I don't trust any source to be honest with me.  Not a single one!  I do my best to try to understand things but when you can't trust anything it's hard to figure anything out.  This makes me so angry I can't even express it!

Then there are the bullies.  The mask bullies.  The political bullies.  The "we're right and everyone else is wrong" bullies.  Cancel culture bullies.

I found out 2 days ago that my husband has been packing a Go bag in case things go to shit and we have to leave our house.  I really can't imagine it getting that bad but being a retired cop some of this is bringing up his PTSD issues.  I'm worried about him.  This makes me especially sensitive to the anti-cop posts out there.  I feel like they are attacks on him.  His daughter and my daughter are pro-BLM and post a lot of things that are anti-cop.   Or at least they feel that way to Ken and his cop friends.  That led to my shitty comments on my daughter's post.  That led to my meltdown 2 nights ago.  

After I sort of calmed down, tho honestly I'm still not really calmed down, I realized how shitty it was and took it down.  She saw it and was extremely hurt and angry.  Yesterday morning she lit me up.  I won't go into what was said but it wasn't pretty.  I've apologized over and over but this is going to take time to heal from.  I brought this on myself and regret hurting her.  Why, when I'm going thru all of this will I then start a battle with my own kid???  

The reality is settling in on me that I need to make some changes.  I've been crying off and on since 2 days ago.  It's like once the bottleneck opened up I can't seem to stop it.  I feel like I'm in pain and I can't escape it.  I've been like this before but now that the release valve has been hit and I created a crisis point in the process I'm becoming even more painfully aware of how much emotional pain I'm in.  

I'm trying to figure out where to go from here.  I really don't know where I'm going to end up but my life has to change.  I'm not suicidal but I'm being honest when I say that sometimes I think it won't be so bad when it's time to die.  Life hurts.  I'm already tired and I'm only 56.  

I used to set goals to get myself into a better mental place.  Right now that's difficult for me.  Things that I would have done in the past, like hiking or taking a trip, now have complications due to my health  issues and COVID issues.  I can't go see a movie and escape for a while.  I read but I can't spend my life in a book.  Would be nice but I can't.  I'm stuck.  

I took my first step today.  I decided to turn off social media.  I've decided to mostly stop listening to the news.  I'm going into a bubble and going to give myself some quiet.  I feel like everywhere I turn there's messages coming at me.  So many of them are against me and my ideals since the media is run primarily by liberals and I'm not a liberal.  I get angry and hurt often about how the world has pictured who I am.  My own daughter sees me that way.  That hurts on a level I'm not going to dig into.  I'm already hurting enough so I think I'm going to try to file that away if possible and never take it out to look at it again.  I'm hurt.  I need to heal.  Instead of fighting a pointless battle I'm going to retreat and curl up in a ball and lick my wounds until I figure out what steps I'm going to take next.  At least I've shut off some of the external negativity.  Hopefully that will improve my outlook on the world and start killing off some of the toxic hateful feelings I've been living with this year.  

My other goal is to strive to avoid the general public as much as I can.  Shopping is NOT something I enjoy anymore.  It's necessary and I do as much of it online as I possibly can.  I want to live life on my own terms and nothing proves to me that I've lost that right as much as going to a grocery store now.  They want to direct the way I walk down an aisle.  I can't even get in the door with out the mask police starting on me.  It goes against my most basic core to cooperate with this - even to the point of being illogical.  I put on a mask to go into a store to buy food and spend the entire time tamping down rage and trying to put a good face on it.  I've worked really hard to keep trying to put a good face on things, even to myself.  The reality is that I truly hate how life has become and the infringements on my freedom to choose for myself.  Yeah, mask police, I get the point of the mask but there is no way I can seem to find it in myself to be gracious about it right now.  I don't even like turtle neck sweaters or foundation makeup because I find them incredibly uncomfortable.  I hate foundation makeup for cripes sake!  It's a thing with me.  Like a phobia.  Putting a mask over my face, where I breathe, feels like torture to me regardless of all the lives I'm saving.  It's like putting me in a high place and telling me to get over my fear of heights.  Doesn't work and there's nothing rational about it.  It is what it is.  

Some of this stuff I'm stuck with but if I can figure out ways to reduce my stress levels and phobic reactions I'm going to work on that.  

Some of the stuff, like the health stuff, will resolve over time.  I'm going to have to be patient.  Sadly you just can't announce that you want a hysterectomy (take the bloody thing out - I don't care if it's cancer or fibroids - just get it OUT - I'm so sick of having periods that last 1-2 months at a time or every time I dare to hike up a mountain that I could scream!!!) or that you want them to take the lump out of your breast (it's weird to know a mass is in your breast but no one is ready to make a decision about it - my instinct is to get the damned thing OUT). You can't expect insurance to cover it until you go through this process.  Until you go to appointment after appointment and go through this and that uncomfortable procedure while your body keeps acting like a shit to you.  You have to get cozy with the shit and live with it.  Possibly for a long time.  

So for now I'm cutting down some of the negative messaging that's been causing me damage.  I'm clearly not coping.  I was trying to but I'm clearly failing.  It means I also miss out on the good stuff from social media but at this point I really need to give that part up to protect myself from the negatives.  I'm thinking I may keep this up until after the election at least in hopes that some of it will calm down.  If it still seems like it might be shit show I may not go back except for once in a rare while. 

That's where I'm at for now.

“Glenna, do you feel like you’re surrounded by idiots?”

One of my coworkers asked me that question today.  I was actually proud of her!  She poked the bear (me - I fit that bill pretty well in our office space)!  I restrained myself from total honestly and said “yes <pause for effect> especially when driving”.  It was one of my perversely prouder moments at work recently!

We’re working on team building at work.  I’ve been pushing for this so am on board with the plan.  I have a fantasy of working well with my teammates, trusting them and their abilities, bringing up the quality of the services we provide by cross training and improving processes by sharing knowledge and smoothing out work loads by sharing work.  

To that end, recently, I moved into a room with 4 other people.  One other introvert (like myself) and 3 extroverts.  We're going to try to get to know/understand each other better and eventually cross train and share workloads.  Sounds like a great idea in theory!

While this IS a great idea in some ways it has problems.  I know we are opening a can of worms in some ways.  Some things are getting aired out on my part - my coworkers are getting to know me a bit - liking me might be another story but they are getting to know me a bit. Affection is nice but unnecessary as far as I'm concerned.  I'm ok with respectful professionalism and I'm working on that.

I’m still an introvert.  That's not going to change.  I'm also rather intolerant of too much peopling.  Also not going to change.  I’m out of my comfort zone.  When I choose to be with people, I’m generally pretty picky about who I’m going to spend much time with.  Work forces unnatural relationships on me.  I’ve learned how to act more extroverted thanks to having extroverted parents and watching them do their thing as I grew up, but the fact is that being around people stresses me out.  That's a basic fact about me.

There has been some progress as far as the team.  I’ve been able to make peace and work effectively with one coworker that I’ve had personality conflicts with previously.  It’s going surprisingly well!  She’s the one I had the proud "poked the bear" moment with today.  

Some of these people really trigger my urge to poke the bear and part of me delights in it.  Like when one of my coworkers thought I was out of the office and asked another coworker if they were alone (we have walls sort of so she couldn’t see me at that moment).  I piped up and said “Nope!  I’m here so you’ll have to wait longer to talk about me!”  I'll admit I sat in my office space behind a wall smirking to myself as she sputtered.

This is someone I’ve historically made a point of avoiding because #1 she’s not my type of person and #2 she’s been bitchy to me in the past, framing is as a “joke” that I didn't find funny.  I’ve called her out on this since we’re now office mates.  They want us to get to know each other which to my mind means that the air needs to be cleared a bit.  If I have to sit with someone day in and day out I’m not going to let them blow smoke up my ass about anything.  Get straight with me or shut it.  

Now she knows what I thought about her bitchy "joke" and that I know she was being bitchy to me.  She finally shut up her defense of it being a joke once she realized I wasn’t going to play the nice-nice game with her.  I'm not going to pretend to make nice.  Suck it up and deal.  If you don't like it, stop handing the shit out or it's coming back at you.  

    I don’t like it when people act like assholes and get away with it.  If they know they’re going to get called out it takes some of the fun out of the whole deal.  

You might think I’m acting like an asshole.  I do that.  I'm not above it.  Sometimes I frolic in my asshole-ness!  I frolic like a mo-fo!  It can be really, really fun to let loose with my bitchy side!  I generally try not to at work but sometimes a bit gets loose on me even there.  I normally hold most of it in until I'm driving home and then I call people who appreciate that asshole that I am and we laugh and laugh!  Well, if you want to, call me out on it if it bothers you and we’ll deal with it.  

    

(these made me laugh)

I’ve warned certain people who like to complain about how “Glenna doesn’t like me” that I’m not interested in baby games, I'm not interested in their emotional needs/dramas around the office and if we act like grown-ups and professionals then things should be fine.  

So that’s me.  I’m not a great “team” player. 

I have fairly simple rules of communication:  Don’t turn one question into two by asking if you can ask me something.  Irritating.

I don’t do small talk.  It’s an inane waste of time.  Not my bag, life is too short to waste on idiotic conversation.  Unless it’s about something funny…then go for it! 

(go for it - I'm waiting)

Don’t baby talk to me.  When you do that the evil beastie side of me wakes up.  That’s the best way I can describe what it feels like when I get triggered.  Best comparison is that I’m like my cat, Lucy.  She is a dominant personality in our house and is triggered by our other cat, Chloe, who lacks confidence and slinks around like prey.  Chloe ends up being treated like prey because she acts like prey. 

If you act like a cringing or cowering animal when you approach me; if you baby talk to me like you’re trying to appease me or appear small to me…I'll find it extremely unappealing and want to get you away from me quickly and keep you away from me so that I won't have to spend so much time reigning in my evil beastie side.  

It's actually better to go around thinking I don't like you than to deal with that less-than-nice side of my personality.  

Honestly, does it really even matter if I like you?  You didn't take this job to have a social life did you?  I took this job to work.  I'm lucky I've made some friends along the way but I go to work each day so that I can pay for my REAL life...the one I live when I'm not at work.  The one that ISN'T replaceable like a job is.  

Moral of the story: Act like a grown up, don't be an idiot, talk to me like a normal person and we should do alright.

I would like a better team atmosphere.  I’d like to be able to leave work and not be “punished” with overload when I return.  I’d like to have others be able to step in and take care of my clients when I’m gone.  I’d like to be able to keep everyone busier instead of a few of us who work at home at night and on weekends to keep up while others seem to have time to nap and wander around socializing.  For that I/we need a functioning team.  For that I need to work on this.    For that I need to spend some time out of my comfort zone.  I have to deal with people I'd prefer to not speak to.  I have to sit in a room of noise/people/input that stresses me out.  

I recognize that I'm part of the problem because I don't always play well with others.  In some ways I will remain a problem that way because there's a limit to how much I'm going to put up from my coworkers.  I'm bendable but there are limits.  But we have a common goal and hopefully we can do better together.  It's not going to be comfortable but I've already made gains from discomfort.  

Do I feel like I'm surrounded by idiots?  You want the real answer?  Obnoxiously and honestly, yes I do, but I'm working on it!  

Proud moment and venting accomplished for tonight - thank you!