Day 18: I’m having a hard timeo.

I having a hard time starting my blog tonight. Mostly because I’m in a weird mood and today was a tough day. I can’t identify the exact feeling that I’m in right now. Let’s see if we can identify it together, through some writing.

So work was tough today. We were slammed. I work for an HVAC company in Texas. Today’s high was 95. People need their AC in the heat. My title is dispatcher, but I do three different jobs. I dispatch, I am the lead CSR (which means I answer every call that comes in) and, if any customers require any repair work, I have to locate the part, price the job, prepare an estimate and then follow up with the customer. Needless to say, on a busy pre-summer day in Texas this is a lot of work for one person, even at a small company.

I’ve felt disrespected a few times at this job, just by no one respecting my position and my contributions to the company. I really feel like I do a lot. I am constantly busy and quite often churn out the work despite the inability to be able to focus on any one thing for more than 3 minutes straight.

My manager never builds, coaches or encourages me. I am only called into her office to be criticized for the one or two mistakes I’ve made versus being praised for the 100,000 things I did correctly that day, or any day.

It’s grating and it wears me down. I had a meeting with both her and the owner not too long ago about a meltdown moment I had when I said to her “there’s literally no point in working here, I don’t get anything for this hard work, no fulfillment, nothing at the end of the day except a feeling of emptiness or me not being good enough.” She immediately responded with “It’s a job, you just come and do your work and go home. I don’t know what else you want.”

Niether of them understood what I mean by my statement. Eventually the next day the owner emailed us and said “I’ve thought about what you said and I want you to be proud of the work you put in here, I want you to go home feeling good about your day.” Nothing was ever done though, all sentiment, no action.

So today, after just getting murdered by calls and an overwhelming amount of stuff for me to be on top of my boss pushed every single one of my buttons. She would come in a chat about personal things, which I find useless because I don’t like her and don’t care, meanwhile I had stuff that actually needed to get done. Then, she would find really weird and random shit to bring up and call me into her office to discuss. It was like ‘what planet are you on right now? We need all hands on deck.’

Towards the end of the day a worker came in and sat in my office, he runs the parts from the supply houses to the techs for us, he said “why do you look so stressed, your job is not hard.” It was like I was Daniel-san LaRusso and Johnny came and swiped the leg and I couldn’t get back up.

My job is not hard? No, it’s not hard. But it’s consuming and unrelenting. It’s 10 things at once. It’s answering 6 phone calls in a row and booking service tickets for each, while running an entire dispatch board and all the technicians, while simultaneously getting quotes for three families with out AC on a 90 degree day while walking in the desert and having someone throw darts at me. That is what my job is like on a day like today. And, that covers about a 20 minute patch of it. Imagine 8 hours.

Thank the universe for my co-worker and our walks. It was the only thing that got us through today. I left 45 minutes later than usual from work, which meant the parking lot at the lake was almost full and the air was the warmest.

Secretly, I was trying to increase my pace for the walk. I wanted to do it in the fastest time yet. The first half of the walk is in some pretty direct sunlight and I would say around the 1st mile mark, I had received my ticket to ride the struggle bus.

Just before mile 2, I had to stop in the shade for a few minutes. Just after mile 2, I had to sit down. I felt nauseous and could not regulate my body temperature. I am so grateful my friend is patient and understanding. She let me take a break and the time I needed. I kept apologizing and she said to stop.

At one point I thought I wasn’t going to make it. I thought I was going to puke, poop, pass out and period all over myself. There is just this moment of fear that came over me “I’m never going to make it to my car.” I couldn’t get past the feeling. It was scary because regardless of where you are in the world, nobody wants to feel sick in public, or the blistering heat for that matter.

We had to just power through and keep going. I had to make it back and eventually I did. I had to rest in my car for about 10 minutes before I even felt I could drive. Then once I started driving and really got that wind blowing I started to feel better. I put on my flavor of the week song (Downtown by Macklemore) and was just so grateful I didn’t die at the park.

I could not stop sweating. I got home and continued to sweat for about 2 hours. I even took a shower in that time, but couldn’t get the water cool enough. My skin, which is still hot to the touch now, was so warm it immediately turned the cool water warm.

I was just shy of 10,000 steps, so once again I put my jam on by Macklemore and danced around my living room. It’s a 5 minute song. I reached my daily step goal after that.

Then I threw some salmon and asparagus in the oven. When it was ready I decided to eat at my dining room table since it had been a while. I had music on all night, I still do. I never turned the TV on to watch shows. Just to have Youtube on in the background.

I have mostly been sitting in my space all evening and texting with friends and thinking and decompressing. I love my space. I haven’t loved a space that I’ve lived in so much since my first sola apartment in Chicago about 7 years ago.

It was a dream apartment, one bedroom, light filled, amazing energy. I always felt safe and secure there. I’m close to feeling that here.

I don’t know what to do about my work situation. I don’t do well in situations like this. I can’t stand when people are not good enough. I can’t stand when people are in charge and make no effort to be good at their job. I can’t stand the air of mediocrity.

I don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but it has always perplexed me that from the outside it seems like people just walk up to this invisible line and stop. Like, oh that’s enough development for me, you all go ahead. I’ll stay here for the rest of my life.

I am sure it has something to do with the depths of one’s soul. Maybe people like that are the newer kids on the block and that’s all they’re capable of achieving or maybe it’s all they think they’re capable of achieving. Perhaps, they don’t realize if they just pushed through a little bit more, if they just finished the last mile and got to their car, their whole life would change.