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MorgenMuffels
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Name: Mish
Birthday: 1/10/1986
Gender: Female
Interests: That day, I thought I had really got hold of something and that my life would be changed,
But nothing of that nature is irrevocably gained.
Like water, the world washes through you and lends you its colors for a time.
Then it draws back, and leaves you once again before the emptiness you bear within yourself, that central insufficiency of the soul you have to learn to live with,
and which, paradoxically, may be our surest motivation.
— Nicolas Bouvier, "L’Usage du Monde"
Occupation: Executive
Industry: Government
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  MorgenMuffels
Member Since:
7/29/2003
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| when a show can hit those places inside you that you never could... i just bow down and submit.
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diving off into the deep end is a good metaphor for a lot of experiences.
i am going to return to work tomorrow after a week + an extra holiday off. it wasn't the most interesting break ever, but once i stopped struggling against the anxiety of the reality that i cannot be in control of everything... i started to enjoy each day more. without having to force myself to consciously enjoy it. it sucks that i can't seem to ever enjoy or appreciate anything in the moment until it is long gone. i really wish i could stop overthinking things so much. but i think i enjoyed it well enough, considering the circumstances for taking time off. i also managed to stave off missing my roommate for more than a year. it's like reading those annoying books in AP english lit... you don't know what the hell it was about, but over time your experience informs your understanding and changes your perception of these memories.
things will go wrong no matter how hard you try to prevent them. there are an infinite number of ways things can go wrong that you cannot possibly conceive. the two male teammates on my team are a good source of comic relief, but they will be never as uptight as i am in their approach to work, therefore will never meet my standards. so it's safe to assume that i will inevitably be disappointed tomorrow when i get to assess how well they subbed in for me, how messily or cleanly they left my cases to pick up. and i've been making bets with myself on how many e-mails await me. 250? 300? should be less than that, since i've set up that filtering rule and we've been sorely lacking in billable work this year. it could go either really badly or pretty well tomorrow, considering all the report preparation i did before leaving. my anxiety is starting to take off, but it's the right amount i think. if i were a slacker i wouldn't think about it at all, and if i were a workaholic i would've been compulsively thinking about it all week, so 10 pm on the night before is just about right.
some of the music out these days is... a'ight. it's not the worst garbage you've ever heard, but it's not the most original nor inspirational either. it's catchy enough to pass through a club, which is the minimum standard for good i suppose. it's predictable, because it's overproduced, like you've heard this already in permutations here and there, waiting for the standard cadence to hurry on home.
being away from work means being less tired, and less numb to things that otherwise wouldn't affect you. living with my father is not unlike living with a boor/boar. but at the same time, it's nice to feel reconnected to your mom, even if only for a few days. i never realized she could be so indecisive when it comes to grocery shopping. i just assumed that she must know everything about ingredients by now, but she doesn't at all. i am slowly learning to become more comfortable being like her -- unapologetic about who i am and what i do, have done, and will do, consequences be damned. she can be so stubborn and frustrating that way, but it's this trait that has kept her going through it all.
ah shit. now i can feel the anxiety gripping my heart like a vise. deep breath...
i thought of a few processes whose progression can be illustrated by an arch of beginning, middle, and end. like... olympic diving. or anything in gymnastics. or arpeggios on the piano. or jumping off the high-dive and sticking the dismount *just* right (most of the time i inexplicably miss the mark; my timing is almost always a second or two off and it makes all the difference). or going back to work... which is more of an extended inverse arch come to think of it. i will try to execute the surfacing as artfully as possible minimizing the unnecessary splashes, how bout that. it isn't until i get through this week that i will have known what it is truly like to take time off. you pay dearly immediately before but long after as well.
well... some things don't change. i still keep returning to beck. i love how this song feels so summery on a hot and lazy afternoon. i wish i could be back at anthro for a day, alone in the office while everyone was out to lunch blasting this song with the lights off to cool off. back when i could still get away with wearing sundresses and flip-flops to work. i did too, until the facilities manager came in and busted my perfectly blissful bubble of solitude with his own. it'd be nice to meet one of those types i think. if only you could do it outside the hazardous confines of work. | | |
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Free Chilly - Lupe Fiasco
i guess the best way for me to get over or through things is to simply not look back. the less time to dwell on it, the better. it certainly helped to snatch up a job straight out of moving home from college to minimize missing those good old times.
there wasn't exactly a formal introduction to my new supervisor; v just hopped over immediately after i learned i'd be transferred to her team, said hi, and nonchalantly said, "now i get to abuse all 3 of you!" hah. i expected to be put on the spot friday, defend where i was at with all my ongoing cases, but she apparently didn't see the need for formalities. today i jumped right into asking her how she wanted specific docs to go, and that was that. i know there are some things about her work style that i already like. she doesn't waste time, cuts to the chase. she is letting me focus on what is most time-sensitive right now, which was pure relief after being asked to close the loop on way too many things last week. it helps working for someone more senior now, because you're allowed to get away with, in fact ordered to, let things slide that aren't so urgent. there's also less nervous energy when your supervisor doesn't have to be held accountable to anyone. plus she's a walking dictionary of experience so there isn't the same kind of hesitation and delay in moving things forward.
it's not fun being reminded how work can bring out that really ugly side in all of us. n now treats me like a kid who'll undoubtedly fuck up, and all that nervous energy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. when she had confidence in me, things didn't feel as difficult. she's one of those individuals who becomes so fearful once she is out of control, and in turn, she stops trusting your abilities. i finally had to say fuck it to myself. if i make a mistake or leave something off, i'll take responsibility for it cuz i do deserve to be yelled at. all her obsessive nagging about remembering to do w, x, y, and z won't do a damn thing to stop me. i felt sad as i watched her talk down to me as she imparted her final instructions, wondering if she already knew how irrelevant her instructions had already become. when staying in control is that big a part of a person, it can't be easy letting go. she put all this hard work into our cases, and now they're being dispersed in all directions. she won't get the credit, nor will she bill for them. the way things are a high-volume firm, i'd imagine feeling empty after leaving it behind.
throughout it all, i haven't felt mad at n for resigning. sad, and betrayed sometimes for leaving me high and dry in the middle of a filing crunch, but it's understandable. it's too much for some people. maybe sometimes you really can't afford to be mr. nice guy and take the time to get to know people, because it takes up too much time out of the day and facilitates attachments that make it that much harder to part ways in the end. i have no doubt in my mind that she liked me the most out of our team, because i was the one who got the most attention. the one who listened to her talk about her family and her interests and made her laugh, the one who stayed behind just to talk at the end of the day. so it's fair, in a regrettable way, to be the one who feels the loss of her the most. my older teammate had gone through this already a year ago, when her first supervisor left for north carolina, even admitted that she "loved" him as the "most wonderful human being alive." she assures me that it won't be easy, transitioning to a new team with its own ways of doing things, but that i'll manage. it's time to grow up i guess. i've been spoiled too long by n, allowed to be lazy and let things slide. she wasn't a perfect boss, but i was pretty damn lucky to be assigned to her fresh out of college.
i hope she understands that none of this is personal. this is just my way of making the detachment as painless as possible. | | |
| i don't know if i am feeling awful right now because i have misplaced someone's trust in me, or if it's because i got caught and now i will have to rebuild that trust all over again. | | |
| sometimes i wonder why most of the legal assistants work so damn hard. you don't exactly get rewarded much in terms of a salary increase, and the mean old lady partner treats you all as the same -- dispensable. i do it because my supervisor is awesome, but also because there is this compulsion in me to see things through to completion. without it, making excuses and giving up would be a foregone conclusion. i suppose i do work this hard for myself, to set a new personal record or something, in spite of the possibility lurking in the back of our minds of being dismissed as a staff redundancy.
there was a team meeting today for our biggest client that has driven us hard, like, well, a slavedriver. a lot of people who normally don't attend did. the client had been stringing us along since november about halting the filing of applications that constitute our bread and butter after an anticipated date, but that date was continuously pushed further and further out for the next 10 weeks. we were only told to keep pushing the client's employees, harassing them and stalking them by phone and e-mail, hook and crook to expedite completion of each application. and it crunched all the way down to yesterday's final deadline, working to the last minute. immediately afterwards came today's official confirmation to stop work, not surprisingly in conjunction with current events reflecting the economic situation. the filing crunch is finally over, and god were we exhausted. i left yesterday having filed applications that i had only drafted the very same morning, not fully believing it was possible to fast-forward through start, middle, and end within one day. it still boggles my head that those things used to take us at least a month yet we were able to crank them out in 1.5 days. before the meeting commenced, the senior associate leading the meeting ran a report to tally our final numbers. in the span of just the last 10 weeks, we had filed 1,010 applications, more than surpassed the number filed in the entire previous year. it didn't dawn on me until now, but that is insane.
at the end of the meeting, the senior associate couldn't stop thanking us for all our hard work, to the point of crying. that really struck a nerve, more than any half-hearted gratitude could convey. i was just glad that i was sitting near the door so i could get the hell out of there before anyone could see me start to cry too. the intensity of yesterday was so high, consumed every last shred of energy left and spit our hollow shells out the day after, to pick up the pieces of our scattered minds. thankfully, my supervisor let me off the hook today, didn't make me do anything taxing. she admitted for us that yesterday was mentally exhausting, that we all needed a day to not do anything remotely related to those apps. she knew it wasn't easy to see things through from start to finish in one day and stay focused and efficient to finish everything on time without making mistakes, apologized yesterday for pushing me this hard. that kind of intensity leaves you speechless afterward. but she hit home when she summed things up. those tears were tears for us all, affirmed that when you put your mind to do something, you really can fucking do it.
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