28 Jan 2011 – Getting a few things off my chest
I almost never complain about my job. Sure, in the past I wrote about my emotions when my old boss was in the process of leaving (well, she was laid off; it’s not like it was her choice to go), but I feel I have to make the fine distinction between writing about that event and complaining about my job.
Especially during these times so filled with uncertainty, having a job, especially a relatively well-paying one given my actual duties, is certainly a great blessing. But perhaps inevitably, there will come a time when one’s tolerance for little niggles becomes overloaded. I like to believe that my patience is capable of being stretched further than most people’s, but I have my limits.
Lately I’ve been feeling like those limits are being stretched to their max. I don’t want to elaborate (at least, not right now), but suffice it to say that an accumulation of little things that usually are just best ignored and forgotten is in danger of becoming a snowball of bad feeling and stress. It’s certainly not a comfortable burden to bear.
I think part of the reason for this rising wave of stress is rooted in my memories of how good things used to be. Comparing then to how things are today results in a clear bias for the past, obviously.
I’m also quite discomfited with my growing acceptance that perhaps some people’s poor reputations, which I had always ignored in the past, may in fact exist for very valid reasons. There are always reasons why some people are branded as malcontents, or too difficult to work with, or whatever else. I deliberately decided a long time ago to ignore these reputations and just allow people to be who they are, fully aware that sometimes some reputations are unfair given the fact that sometimes things just get too personal at work. In other words, someone might get colored by a particular brush undeservedly simply because whoever is talking about that person has a personal problem with him/her. Or, an isolated incident just distorts the entire picture of a person.
Well, perhaps I’ve been too patient with certain people, and maybe there is some truth to what some people say about them. I always say tigers never change their stripes; maybe the description of those stripes was accurate all along, and I was just too naive to want to believe otherwise.
I sincerely hope that this uncomfortable feeling goes away, one way or the other. It’s a very rough and heavy cross to bear, and it’s taxing all my already depleted mental, emotional, and spiritual energies to near-empty just thinking about it.
I don’t want to respond in ways that I might regret. Life is already too short.
