Fight or Flight?
I have been stressed beyond capacity for the last two months. Putting a new computer system in a library is not easy. I'm not really complaining in that regard - there are other people working on this changeover that have way more stress than I do. Nevertheless, it's added a lot of hassle to my life. It is one of the single most stressful things that a library can go through. Awesome. My job has basically involved training and ensuring that all my staff members are prepared for the change. Thankfully, I have a pretty cool staff and no one has suggested all out rebellion. In addition to the computer stuff, I've had a few other things going on at work. The day-to-day grind like preparing for payroll and board meetings. Also, as a public librarian in Alberta, the monumental task of preparing a couple of grant applications, one of them extremely intensive that requires surveying our library population for two weeks. Bleah. Oh, and in the last couple weeks of February, I was also asked to teach a course on a certain topic. And they wanted the proposal in two days. No pressure.
Of course, having all of this stuff to do at work does not let me off the hook at home. Collapsing when I walk in the door is not really an option. I have two kids to take care of, a household to keep in semi-working order (dishes, laundry, garbage, and Pirate Boy's homework/school requests are must-do's), and our taxes to prepare. Also, Ninjababy has been pretty sick. She is, we're fairly sure at this point, lactose intolerant. As soon as we cut milk out of her diet (which was not fun, but not as bad as I'd feared), she got better. Apparently, I was also sick for all of January, so when I took Ninjababy to the doctor, he also made me go on antibiotics.
It's been fairly insane and I have really not been posting until now. The interesting part of this was my reaction to the stress. Mentally, I run away from it all. It's something I've really always done.
The last two months, I have spent my very little free time:
- Thinking wistfully about vacations. Planning trips that I can't take. Missing London terribly. I even signed up for a conference session on library exchange programs.
- Looking at house plans. Our house is too small for all of our things and it has made keeping the house organized that much more difficult. My kingdom for a playroom where I can shove all the kids' stuff and not look at it anymore.
- Considering cutting all my hair off. I seem to think that if I look different, I might be different, and maybe the new, different me could handle all of this better.
- Buying lottery tickets, figuring if I win then I can literally just walk away from the stress.
I've not actually run away, but I am definitely a "flight" person mentally. Thankfully, the worst of it is over.
I'm curious, does anyone else react to stress this way? What do you guys do?
3 Comments:
Dear Ash;
I'm sad to hear about your stress. I can't even begin to imagine. My job stresses me out, and I don't have half the responsibility that you do, nor do I have a house, a husband and two kids. I'm a terrible procrastinator, and my coping mechanism for stress is just deny, deny, deny. Pretend that there aren't 18 billion things that you have to do this week. Pick up a good book and read all night and get lost in the story. It's kind of a poor way to cope because it certainly is not going to help the situation in the long run, but I do feel better for those few hours.
And what information did you find about librarian exchanges? I'm intrigued.
Feel better better my dear. As my mom always says, this too shall pass.
I'll let you know about the library exchanges in a month or so. I registered for the class, but it hasn't actually happened yet.
Hey Ash, I am a bit behind but I hope that your stresses start to diminish. I totally understand the work thing, we are in the process of changing our email client and re-designing and migrating our public and private webs. Good luck, a good fitness routine helps alot but then so does help at home, what you really need is a good wife :)
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