I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Personal Epiphanies

So, this will probably reveal a little to much about me, but so it goes.

As you might know, Bob, I'm a stress eater. When things go to shit, I feel the need to snack. I'm not proud of this fact, I'm just stating it to lay the ground work.

For the past half decade I've been consciously trying to lose weight. It's also been a pretty stressful time, what with losing the job I loved, having to start a new career, and all the other thousands of things that add up into a bundle of "OMG, this queso cheesy dip is the bestest."

I've tried all kinds of strategies. When I have the time to use the Wii to keep my metabolism rate up, I am able to lose weight. But the day job is a fairly sedentary thing (as are most of them these days). And then, as I lose weight and get to feeling comfortable, something always happens to increase the stress level. As an example, I'll give you just the latest from today, sales rep was standing at a local print shop counter wondering if I could send him banner art that he could print out to place on our product for a show that starts tomorrow. 'Cause, you know, I remember perfectly every little job I've done here over the past 4.5 years (in that time I've generated over 600 gigabytes of data for over 100,000 files - quick math thanks to automated counting tools) and/or just have something laying about ready to go. He's actually standing at the counter waiting for me to send him something (don't worry, already taken care of). And that wasn't the worst/strangest request today. Just so you know what I'm dealing with here (have I mentioned the executive who needed business cards printed in a few hours because he was out of them and about to leave for an overseas trip?).

So, yea, diet blown.

But what I really wanted to tell you was this. Working as a Rad Tech this weekend at the hospital we dealt with a few trauma calls, getting a patient orientated, trying to figure out the numerous software packages we have to use to maintain all the information and trying to do things I hadn't been trained for, a few rush orders for ICU, not to mention the normal rush work for the ED we do (including two stroke protocols).

No desire to snack. While stressed, there wasn't that stress response.

Now, I don't have to deal with office politics (or not much of them) at the hospital, which is a lot of the stress I deal with at the day job. But still, as a professor once intoned (and I often repeat) "It's just paper" at the day thing. At the Rad Tech thing, I am dealing with people's lives (mostly indirectly, but sometimes like this weekend, I'm directly involved with saving them). And the "just paper" stuff stresses me to keep this weight on (or gain it back, I am up about 30 lbs over my lightest, which was just before I started here) while holding people's lives in my hands leads to nary a twinge of "Feed Me Seymour."

It just kind of hit me this weekend that was going on.

2 comments:

Janiece said...

Just so. My job is "just phones," as opposed to my last career where I had responsibility for every cryptographic code in the Pacific Theater.

While I was considerably younger then, I find my own experience to be similar to yours.

Manufactured stress is somehow worse for me than the real deal.

Steve Buchheit said...

Janiece, I'm glad it's not only me. And it is only manufactured stress at the day thing. It's other people waiting until the absolute last minute before they even think that they need something.

Or, like today, having someone talk about shooting a training video and starting out with "shoot a lot of video, then edit it down" and I had to say, "No, step 1 should be write a script and then develop a shot list from that." No, this person has no design or communications experience but he's now our "expert" and is arguing to have "professional tools" installed on his computer, because that will make the dreck he produces look professional (just a hint for everyone, I could use crayons and develop professional communications, we could buy an rank amateur all the high-end pro tools and it will still look amateur - I experience this almost daily).