Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This

Today has been one of those days where I just want to crawl back into bed and stop interacting with other human beings. My boss put me in a very bad position today by giving me instructions to go against what the CEO told me to do. So I had to make a judgment call and I followed the CEO's instructions and apologized to my boss. I'm pretty annoyed though that she'd put in this type of position to begin with.

I'm also having a bit of an issue with my son's teacher. She sent us a nasty-gram over the weekend about how he wasn't doing his work last week. So I told her we'd do what we could to support her, but we don't have a mechanism to understand what he should be working on. The kids are supposed to complete their planner every day with the homework they need to do. Well, when there isn't anything in the planner and he claims he doesn't have any homework, and she won't respond to emails or join the 21st century and use a website to list assignments; I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do.

So I wrote back to her (using paper and pen) asking what we could do to find out what homework he should be working on. Her response was "A lot of it is work he doesn't want to finish at school." That is verbatim, including the underlined word. Now I ask you, what exactly am I supposed to do with this response? So great, now I know what type of work he isn't doing, but I still don't know what work I should be making sure he's getting done. Anyway...

Apparently I wasn't the only one who was a bit surprised by the amount of snow we got yesterday, as the local news felt compelled to explain their weather models to justify why they underestimated the amount of snow in their predictions. According to my weather app on my phone, we're supposed to get snow again on Wednesday, which is good because we had a great deal of sun and wind today so most of our pretty snow is gone. It still looked very beautiful and wintry this morning though.

Perspective Lost

My perspective from yesterday and my goal to be more positive at work didn't last very long.  It's been a long day and everything is annoying me today.  I'm feeling frustrated with the coworker who I really like because she won't gather the courage to speak up for herself.  My coworker who's workload recently changed so she's supposed to be helping me with mine is annoying me because she seems to be incapable of figuring out fairly routine technology issues without help.  My coworker who always kind of rubs me the wrong way is annoying me because she treats everyone so poorly and ignores deadlines.  I've really been trying with her, yesterday I noticed and told her how nice she looked in her cute skirt.  I remind myself constantly how smart she is and how good she is at her work...when she does it.  I'm frustrated with the consultant who ran a file for me and I told him it had some duplicates.  Then he sent an email acting all indignant and saying that the file wasn't wrong.  Of course, the one he was referring to as correct was one he reran this afternoon, not this morning when he originally asked me to look at it.  I do like auditable systems.

I was looking at some data today and was reminded of a time that my boss did something completely unethical, and so even though she's out of the office traveling today, I'm feeling annoyed with her.  I'm annoyed with the inefficiency of the gentleman who sits in the office next to me.  He had his boss (who sits two doors over) send me an email to see if I had time for a question.  I replied that I did, and that email was forwarded to the person right next door.  He then emailed to ask me when he could come talk to me.  So I replied that he could come over.  He then came over to ask if I could get him a report with addresses.  Because that question couldn't have gone into the original email?!  I think part of the problem may be that I normally work from home 1 to 2 days each week, and since I was off for the last 2 weeks I've been in the office every day this week.  Maybe I need to work from home part of the time so I don't end up biting someone's head off.

I'm also feeling frustrated about my current weight.  I'm working on it now, and that's a good thing, but I'm upset that I let myself get to this point again.  My clothes are tight, uncomfortable, and don't look good; and it doesn't help that I've had to wear office clothes every day this week.  When I was doing bent-over rows and rear lateral raises this morning , I could feel the fat in my back bunching.  I suppose that means I'm doing those correctly, but just...ugh!  It should be as difficult to get out of shape as it is to get into shape!

I'm really missing being able to get outside for some of my workouts.  My husband will brave the icy patches during the winter, but I'm sticking to the elliptical and workout DVDs right now for my cardio workouts.  I know that if I tried to run outside I'd probably slip and fall on the ice and be completely out of commission.  So I'm stuck inside and it's just not as spiritually rejuvenating.

I realize that it's only January 8th and that I'm failing miserably on the goal to be more positive.  I was reading one of the HR blogs I follow today and realized that maybe the reason this is so difficult is because of evolution.  From the article:

Human beings are wired to look for bad news. We are always looking for negatives that could affect our existence. From a survival standpoint, it’s more important to focus on things that kill us than things that make us feel good. This is called negativity bias, and it is great for survival of the species – not so good for feeling good about work and your place in the company. This is why we never remember the 20 great things our managers say in our reviews and piss and moan about the ONE thing we didn’t do so well in February.

Of course the following paragraph talked about how we can combat that mindset.

The good news is that we can actively manage how our brain works. Specifically, when we understand that we have this negativity bias, we can avoid it by focusing on the good things that happen to us. Knowing we tend to overemphasize the negative allows us to process that one negative event – allow it to be absorbed – and give us the freedom to then focus on the great things that happened at work that same day.
Once we recognize the good stuff, we then can focus on it and give it more time in our conscious – more importance. All the while reducing the impact of the negative events.

I guess it's clear that I still have work to do.  Maybe I need  to read another book about the holocaust.  Sigh...

But I did manage to get a nice photo this morning of the stars and the bare winter trees.  I was also cheered quite a bit when I picked my son up from the after school program today and found him helping a second grade girl with her math.  There's nothing like parental pride to help with a negative attitude!