Zombies, Camping, and Work

 Funny dreams last night

In one, I was the hero in a zombie/vampire story. I was trying to keep a group of us safe, while they tried to get into our house, we were on the roof for a bit and they kept trying to get closer and closer, and we call kept beating them away, we learned they were after some type of coded message being kept in the basement.

In another part, I was on a camping trip in a truck by myself, I had driven to some unknown town and for some reason decided to go into some other house that was empty and cook some food (macaroni and cheese I think). Only later for them to return home to the mess and want to know what I was doing there. I explained I was sorry but really wanted a hot meal.

In my third dream; I was at work, outside and I got very upset with a few folks that work for me (my director, and my project manager I think), I was shouting at them for something where they were wrong and I was right, and I just wanted them to recognize they were wrong and it caused an overly heated argument. I just wasn't feeling respected, and I don't think I was respecting others.

I think the first dream is related to me feeling like a hero yesterday at work, we finally got the help system up and running, when our app architect came out all upset at one of the clients, so I went back to my desk and solved the problem and made everything good again. The third dream I think was a reflection of that anger, blowing things out of proportion for no good reason. The second dreams seems that I'm guilty for something, taking something that isn't mine?

So the whole thing has me thinking about different ways people “deal” with stress. There has been a lot of talk between some of my workmates “blaming” the clients. Personally I feel it is unjust, plus I don't think it's a good idea to blame the clients. Also the problem is that in addition to not being respectful of others, I know they might be just people “blowing of steam” but is it really the best outlet to blame the clients?

Counselling and Journaling (META)

I suppose it's been six years since my last entry? Six years ? 

I think I've been going through one of the hardest times in my life right now at least in a long time, been feeling rather depressed and down on myself like I have no one to talk to and nowhere to turn.

The place where I work  has an employee assistance program called LifeWorks, I once used a similar program when I was at my last job

I've been feeling unusually stressed the past couple of months, and frustrated. I have been planning projects (releases) now for close to three years, and every one of them has been turning out okay, except this last one. Things have been running off track, everything that can go wrong seems to be going wrong, and on top of that I stupidity allowed myself to plan everything without any kind of buffer for murphy's law.

As we continue to fall deadline after deadline I've been growing more depressed, and I have been afraid of accidently pushing this out to the people I work with, my team members who look up to me for “optimism” yet I haven't had any to give.

So interestingly, as I was speaking to the counsellor, about all my feelings and concerns, she asked me if I ever considered “journaling”, which made me laugh at first, as I've bene journaling all my life,

But then I had a small epiphany, You see I gave up blogging at the begging of January, shortly after realizing that my latest release was basically shot all to hell and would require a lot of my time, effort and focus to get things back “on track”.

But what I failed to realize was that blogging was more than just a “hobby” but an important emotional release of my felling's on various topics, I way of emoting out things that otherwise I could not say to others.

On some level, of course I knew I was doing this in my blogging, but as I look at it now it seems obvious that giving up writing about my thoughts is why I am feeling such an unsurmountable amount of stress. I mean I was unable to think; unable to meditate, unable to do anything else, all because I wasn't getting the “feelings” out of me. Heck, I've been yelling in the van by myself to try and get the feelings out, talking to myself even. So here it is my attempt to get some of the stress off me by writing about it.

Not only that, just thinking of the possibility of being able to write my feelings down again starting to make me feel better, just knowing that I could have some “thing” to talk to if not someone. That I can sort out and release my thoughts.

What also helped, after getting things out of my system is the slow realization that I'm being too hard on myself. I know I'm doing the best job I can, we all are, and I can't be responsible for what everyone else does. And my attempts to “focus” on the release actually are working against me. “focus” is causing a depression. Too much focus on one thing...well it may not be a good thing.

And although I can give myself permission to “push away” the bad thoughts, I still need to take the time and release them, to get them out there, and that is the “secret” I have been missing.

So my big problem is with the projects application architect who is not a bad guy, but he's rather “old school” and thinks it's okay for things to run off schedule and miss deadlines. He is also very optimistic even when missing deadlines and doesn't seem to worry much about it.

This is quite uncomfortable for me to deal with to say the least. I'm the guy who treats commitments like promises and feels very personally guilty when things are not delivered.

So I'm not exactly sure where this is going, but hopefully writing it all down will help.