I've decided I need to pick the grateful posts back up. I can't commit to a day. I may not even make it to this once a week. They probably won't always be in the same format either. These thoughts are always in mind even if they're not on "paper" here, but the act of putting them down in writing does my soul good. And with the end of the year quickly approaching, I feel it's best to end on a high note.

There seems to be a lot circling lately, like something big is coming. The universe seems to be preparing me for something. I have no idea what; I can't even point to exactly what I mean. Maybe it's just a feeling or an intuition. Maybe it's that I feel a need for a change. Something has to give sometime.

I'm tired of talking about and thinking about work. When I was young, I thought I'd make something big out of myself, that I'd become a magazine editor and create beautiful pages, or that I'd write awe-inspiring articles for some big newspaper. Life took such a toll on me, between my family's problems and the pressure I put on myself, that I gave up trying. I took the easy way out, the art history route, that required no more than me putting my nose in a book and visiting quiet, peaceful museums. The thought of it now lulls me into a peaceful state. I fought so hard for so much of my early life, fought for myself and for women and for animals, fought against people who'd rather I didn't exist, who'd rather continue to step on me and those I stood for on their way up, that eventually I did feel trampled and squashed. So I gave up and retreated into myself. I see it now, though at the time I thought I was just doing what was best for me. I guess it was what was best for me, but I feel like I also cheated myself out of what could have been an amazing, if trying and stressful, life.

The annoying part is that despite me running from positions of power, they somehow keep getting thrust upon me. This office looks to me for guidance now, and I feel no more suited to that than I would to swimming in the Olympics or figuring complex math equations. I'm out of place. I'm torn as well, because I feel cheated, like if I was going to be this stressed out, it could have at least been for something that I cared about, some cause or career that I wanted, rather than one I fell into unintentionally. And if a stressful yet worthy career was something I wanted to avoid, why can't I actually do that and find something peaceful that I can do?

It's not that I don't care about my work. I care about the people here and about making this work so we all succeed, so we can make enough money to do the fun things in life without worrying about paying bills, so that we can make a difference in the lives of our customers. But running a company is stressful, and our customers half the time are jerks. I keep coming back because of my coworkers, because I care about them. If it wasn't for them, I would have been gone a long time ago. I am grateful for them. I'm also grateful for the lessons this job has taught me, like management skills, communication skills (HR will do that, quick), patience, and even more empathy and understanding, though I thought I had no more room left for that.

I'm grateful for this trying and stressful year. It didn't kill me, so it must have made me stronger.

fed up

I'm so fed-up today, so frustrated. The boss tells me I should be the bigger person, I should start the conversation with rude woman. That it was all just a miscommunication, she thought I meant something I didn't mean, I thought she was saying something she wasn't saying. Fine, got it, I fully recognize and take responsibility for my part in that. I did not, however, blow up, send a nasty email, and then never try to apologize for it. I have never and would never do that, not to the degree she did.

This is not to say I don't get mad. That same day I raised my voice to an employee who screwed something up, but I never ventured into personal territory, I never insulted him, and a few moments after raising my voice I returned and apologized for my manner. We laughed about it. And that's the way it should be-- we're all going to get fed up and frustrated from time to time, but her reaction was WAY out of line, and her lack of an apology is just as bad.

All I get are excuses from the boss. She was tired, she was stressed out, she was trying to protect a fellow worker (who is a gay man) because he was stressed out, and she feels a natural tendency to protect men like him. BLAH BLAH BLAH. I've worked hard for this company for two years, killing myself, stressing myself out, because I believe in what we're doing and I believe in our people. She's been around a few months and she thinks she gets to talk to me about stress? About staying up all night working? She thinks her relationship with our boss is more important than mine?

He says she feels like we don't respect her, that we don't take her seriously. What does he expect when we've never seen her resume, know nothing about her, and she gets dropped on us to manage, makes more money than most of us, and the first thing she produces for us is crap. Crap. So he gives her a different project. Now this one she is running with, she's good at this. But ultimately we don't totally trust her, and I certainly don't trust her professionalism (who writes 'hahahahhaaha" all the way across the line of an email to a client, anyway?), plus the part of the project that led to the blow up was about money, and that's my domain around here. She wants to spend our money, I'm going to prod and ask questions. It's my job. We're broke.

So we're all feeling a little like he's brought her in because she's his friend, she lost her job, and now he's paying her more than the rest of us, and her output is questionable. Then she insults me. I'm just at a total loss as to how I'm supposed to find my way to being the "bigger person" here.

Don't get me wrong, I love my boss. He's the best boss I've ever had and probably ever will. But he's fallible, and I think this whole thing was a mistake. I just have to get him to see it, and I don't know how.

I go back and forth. One minute I think, "I have got to let this go. I will let this go." And I feel better. Then I think, "No one talks to me that way. As much as my grandfather told me that nothing worth doing was easy, he also would never have let anyone talk to him that way." And I want to have a very frank conversation with my boss.

I know you're all sick of hearing about this. I'm really struggling here, though. I'm trying to get it out of my head. I worked myself up to tears this morning thinking about it. She's not just going to go away after a week-- he's talking about keeping her on full time. I'm so frustrated.

lord, grant me patience

I'm not a religious person, but I need a prayer today. It's only 10 a.m. and already I feel the ire and resentment boiling up inside my chest. I'm clenching my jaw. I have to keep reminding myself every 3 minutes, unclench.

The rude woman has continued to be rude. She's emailing around me, sending things to my boss about his schedule instead of to me, though she knows that I both manage his calendar exclusively and receive his emails too. Then when I reply with a proposed time, she emails him back and says whether or not it will work. This morning she is trying to schedule a meeting with the whole team about the project and is not including me on it. It's entirely passive-aggressive, not to mention pathetic.

Part of me, a big part of me, wants to lash out. I want to put her in her place and remind her who pays her check. I want to outright fire her. It's unfortunate that we need her for this project, which should be done in the next week. It's also unfortunate that she has a friendship with my boss from a previous job. It's clouding his vision-- he's ever so slightly defending her when I bring her up, saying things like "well, the project will be over soon, and she's just stressed." I feel like he should be defending me, his ally, his #1 employee, who was insulted and belittled by this crazy woman.

But another part of me believes what you all have told me-- that I should be patient, that I should try to learn from this. That anyone who acts this way is frightened and insecure. I'm trying to be the bigger person, trying to swallow my pride and just get on it with it. I feel sabotaged and ignored, but I'm trying to put out peacefulness, kindness, and calmness into the world. It's so hard.

As my grandfather would have told me, nothing worth doing is ever easy.

absent

I don't mean to be so absent. I'm present, fully present, in my life, which I suppose dictates that I must be more absent here. I'm outside of my head lately, and it's only when I'm inside my head that I feel the urge to post, to explore what's there. I'm reacting without really thinking, which I don't like but is becoming more and more familiar.

Work has been very, very difficult. The company is broke to the point where I feel guilty about cashing my pay check-- even though the company's bank will cover it so it won't bounce, I know there's not enough money in the account to pay it. We're struggling through, day to day, trying to pay bills.  The SBA and all other avenues we've tried for small business funding have fallen though. Apparently you have to prove that you don't need money (that you're able to pay your bills off in time and that you have a good credit history) before they will give you any money. I know they have to cover their own asses, but what's the point in giving a loan to someone who already has money? If we had money to cover our bills, we wouldn't need a loan.

Luckily the rest of my life has been peachy. All my Christmas shopping is done, and I got some great deals on some perfect presents. We're hosting Christmas lunch at my house with both my parents and my husband's family. We've been spending a lot of time with friends, trying to keep our minds off the dismal work environments we're both dealing with. Boone is growing into a very good dog, the only problem being that he likes to keep the backyard clean... he seems to think Bub is dirtying it when he goes #2, so Boone "cleans" it up... I won't go into more detail there. We're exploring options.

One thing that has been on my mind the last couple of days-- how do you react to rudness? There's a woman who works for us on special projects on a contract basis from her home out west. We have a project that she's been working on that has to be done by next week, so she's stressed, which I understand. But when I said something she didn't like in an email (it wasn't mean, it just wasn't what she wanted to hear), she came back with an insult about my knowledge level of the project and a suggestion that if I wanted it to continue, perhaps I should be the one staying up late to work on it. It was both unprofessional and counterproductive, not to mention rude. My coworker, who is managing the project internally, talked to her, told her to cool off and get back to work, but she has yet to apologize to me for her snap. At this point I'm filing it away, knowing that when she's done with this project I'll make a huge push to never use her again for future projects. I also feel myself leaning towards being a little slower in my replies and a little less friendly too, but I'm trying to just swallow the burnt taste and let it go. What would you do?