Navigating the Marshes and Lightweight Loa...

[savageseraph]

It has been a bit of a hard year and then some for my division of the company. My overall parent company is strong and getting stronger, and they realize there are market forces that will create cyclical patterns of profit and loss in all their businesses. A few years back when some other divisions were struggling, we were going strong. What that means is that we've grown lean over the last bit, running with as pared down a staff as possible. Now, with new business (and potentially a lot of it) almost certainly coming, we're trying to juggle a bushel of initiatives, all of which seem to have high priority. There's a lot of stress that comes along with that.

Right now, I've been moved back to my original team (something I'm deeply grateful for) and I want to dive back into that work more deeply. However, I still have some obligations to the team I was with for the last 7 months or so, and they're in a bad spot too in regard to taking on more work. In short, I''m getting pulled in two different directions.

Today it felt good to sit down with one of the guys on my former team and just talk about the pressure. It wasn't whiny or whimpering or snarky. Just a straightfoward acknowledgement that what I'm feeling isn't just me. What he's feeling isn't just him. It was good. It doesn't change our current dilemma, but it feels good knowing that I'm not making my way through the marshes on my own.

Idol was a bit meh tonight. Sure, 80's night wasn't as totally cheesetastic as I was expecting, but I so hate it when songs get butchered, and while there were some standouts, there were a fair share of bloody messes. I find that I savor the bloody messes a good deal less when they happen during the regular show than I do during the selection process. Meh.

Before Idol, I read Kira Saito's Bound, a fluffier YA than I've been consuming lately about New Orleans and voodoo and curses. The story, like the characters, was a bit shallow, and it ended on a cliffhanger of the sort one would expect at the end of a chapter, not the end of a book. It annoyes me a bit that the characters do things but their motivations are muddied. It annoys me that they are more juvenile than I prefer. It also annoys me that the writer keeps secrets from the reader as a means of creating suspense. Also, there was a dream sequence that really just pissed me the fuck off. Still, I'm distracted by it (and perhaps horrified by it) enough to have cracked open the next book in the series. Who knows? It might get more developed as it goes on. Though I'm not holding out a lot of hope.

Comments

[rubyelf.livejournal.com]

It's always good to feel like if you're just muddling through, someone else is muddling along with you!

[savageseraph.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's all about knowing that someone is sharing your pain. That you're not just being too touchy or grouchy or special snowflakey.

[fleete.livejournal.com]

Today it felt good to sit down with one of the guys on my former team and just talk about the pressure.

Imagine that! I know that, at least in my case, that it's really easy to just bury those feelings and not talk about them to anyone, and then we end up with a roomful of people all equally frustrated and all equally silent about it. Hooray for honest and sympathetic conversations amongst co-workers!

[savageseraph.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. We tend to do that at work to, but since the change in management of the team, the guys are more open, more relaxed, more willing to talk.

[foxrafer.livejournal.com]

I only ever watched the Idol selection shows rather than the actual competition (although I haven't watched for a couple of years). There's something morbidly entertaining about them.

[savageseraph.livejournal.com]

I stopped watching the auditions for the most part and I usually only watch the show itself, not the results. I usually just read about them on Lindsay Parker's blog the next day.