![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Blogging about work is hawt. Also I am emo.
The thing, is, I don't really have any complaints! Usually talking about work means WHINE WHINE WHINE MY BOSS SUCKS MY COWORKERS ARE DICKS WHINE WHINE.
Which I can understand -- I've worked in less ideal environments before.
However, I gotta say -- it's nice that when my boss returns from a vacation and comes to check in with my progress I suddenly feel more motivated to work, more inspired to creativity and, frankly, more excited about being alive (1).
This is because my boss rocks. He's that rare creature -- someone who is actually good at managing people and also employed as a manager. He worked his way up from the bottom, so he knows all about how the job is done -- he was a programmer himself, he understands the process, and when he has nothing better to do or we're in a major crunch he'll actually get his hands dirty with some code. He's really helped me adapt to corporate culture and federal employment culture, guiding me through office politics and gently making me feel like an utter twat when I screw up -- because I deserved it and it drove the lesson home. I'm now extremely well-equipped to deal with office life, which is a major life skill for someone in my line of work.
He's frank and understanding and lenient about things like when we can come in or what we wear -- but strict and demanding when it matters: he's really good at making sure the job gets done and done well. (Again, it helps that he knows what "a job well done" looks like.) He doesn't lord his position over anybody on his team but will joyfully bully anyone not in our team to make sure we get the best equipment, people, time slots, etc. that we can. He also shields his developers from the bureaucracy, which is a MAJOR plus -- he pretty much takes care of all administrative details, leaving us developers with very few interruptions to us doing what we're paid to do.
As a result, our team consistently puts out the best products in the shortest time with the best documentation.
In short, he's a great boss.
Sure, I have some gripes about work -- my coworkers annoy the shit out of me sometimes, especially my officemate, but they're largely competent and easy enough to get along with. I have major issues with our development platform -- we use the .NET environment and I HATE it because it's sloppy and ugly and generally awful -- but it's something I can't change (har har, federal standards and contracts, lawl) and have gotten used to working around. But really, I'm lucky in my job. I'm paid well, I got great benefits out of it, some of them for life (401k *CHEERS WILDLY*), I'm gaining valuable experience, and I enjoy working here.
Honestly.
It's just that I've been feeling kind of like crap lately, due to school drama and pointy-things-in-my-mouth drama and family drama. I'd forgotten that work is actually fun.
So here's the deal with the footnote up there about being more excited to be alive again:
(1) I've been pretty depressed lately, which really isn't anything new or exciting. I've actually decided to see a therapist for the first time since I was forced to by my counselor in high school. And I wanted to honestly give it a shot this time, since I wasn't so hot on the idea as a teenager. I'm not sure if it's helping or what... it's at least interesting to talk everything out with my therapist, though so far it's really just been me talking a lot, with very little therapy work being done. But then, I have a lot to talk about when it comes to explaining why I'm depressed. I mean, I've talked straight through each and every hour-long therapy session so far (I've had five, I think, so that means I have talked for five full hours) and we're still not done with the background information.
On the bright side, he did in fact confirm the diagnosis: I am indeed depressed and not just making it up! That's actually good to know, because I wonder sometimes if I'm not just being silly and oversensitive or something. But apparently, no, there's something pretty wrong with my head! Believe it or not this is reassuring information for me.
Anyway. So I've been pretty depressed. I've had a lot of reasons, but it immediately got worse after I came home for vacation. For one, I was with my family again, and that's a whole host of issues in itself. For another, my boss was on vacation and I had little to motivate me at work.
Oh. That's right. I also had surgery to look forward to.
I had my first surgery on Friday last: I got all four wisdom teeth pulled. I was VERY nervous beforehand because (a) FIRST SURGERY (b) NEEDLES INVOLVED (c) they were going to FUCK WITH MY MOUTH. For those not in the know, I have an embarrassingly strong needle phobia (can't even watch people get shots in movies) and an extremely sensitive mouth (very sensitive to pain, heat, and flavour -- for example, drinks that are just warm to others will literally BURN me -- turn red and puff up and everything). So I think it's pretty understandable that I was kind of twitchy about the whole thing.
But I went through with it and it went fine and hopefully I will never need oral surgery again. I'm super cranky about not being able to chew -- you just don't realize how orgasmic the act of chewing is until you can't do it for a week. Although I can't open my mouth far enough right now anyway -- in addition to having a sensitive mouth, I also have a very small jaw -- hell, I'm just a small person in general. So to get IN my mouth to do the surgery, they cranked my jaw WAY open -- pulling the corners of my mouth (which cracked and bled a bit) and doing SOMETHING to my jaw joints/muscles such that they're extremely sore and I can't open my mouth wide enough to fit a teaspoon in flatwise comfortably. I'm pretty tired of my bland diet and of the endless amounts of live-culture yogurt I have to eat to counterbalance the ridiculous antibiotics I've been given (SERIOUSLY THE PILLS ARE AN INCH LONG GUYS WHAT THE FUCK). I was also pretty put out by the pain meds I had to take for the first few days -- the Vicodin wasn't working for me so my mom gave me her old Percoset and man, that worked good. I hated it. I was completely loopy and high -- and really, I don't like the feeling of being drunk or high, especially when all I get to do is lie in bed and try to focus my eyes on the computer screen. In my view pretty much the only benefit of being unsober is how it lowers my level of social anxiety.
So. I've spent the last few days flopping around in bed, in pain, in my family's house, with nothing to do.
Small wonder I dropped like a rock into a depressive phase and started crying randomly -- I get depressed most easily when I fell I'm being unproductive, and when I'm too drugged to work and forbidden to even chew, yeah, that gets me pretty good. I see little point in life then -- nothing dramatic like being suicidal, I just get terminally uninterested and, well. Lie there and flop around like a fish. It's pretty sad. I'm still going through the Granddaddy of Existential Crises -- the "Why Am I Here?" one. I see little point in my existence unless I'm helping people or creating/producing something worthwhile. When I do too little of either I basically shut down until I manage to pull myself together to drag my ass out of it. It's pretty retarded, I guess. I'm working on it. But that's how I roll -- if I feel unhelpful and/or unproductive, I fall into a depressive state where I -- guess what! -- don't do anything, worsening the problem.
So I sloped back to work today and listlessly fiddled with my project. Then my boss showed up, critiqued what I had and gave me new assignments and suddenly I felt much better. I'm still in a depressive phase, I can tell, but I feel more active and productive, which will help put me on the road to something less ridiculous. I still have a long-term problem. I'm still refusing medication although it's quite obvious I have a chemical imbalance in my brain. But for now, I feel a little better.
Which I can understand -- I've worked in less ideal environments before.
However, I gotta say -- it's nice that when my boss returns from a vacation and comes to check in with my progress I suddenly feel more motivated to work, more inspired to creativity and, frankly, more excited about being alive (1).
This is because my boss rocks. He's that rare creature -- someone who is actually good at managing people and also employed as a manager. He worked his way up from the bottom, so he knows all about how the job is done -- he was a programmer himself, he understands the process, and when he has nothing better to do or we're in a major crunch he'll actually get his hands dirty with some code. He's really helped me adapt to corporate culture and federal employment culture, guiding me through office politics and gently making me feel like an utter twat when I screw up -- because I deserved it and it drove the lesson home. I'm now extremely well-equipped to deal with office life, which is a major life skill for someone in my line of work.
He's frank and understanding and lenient about things like when we can come in or what we wear -- but strict and demanding when it matters: he's really good at making sure the job gets done and done well. (Again, it helps that he knows what "a job well done" looks like.) He doesn't lord his position over anybody on his team but will joyfully bully anyone not in our team to make sure we get the best equipment, people, time slots, etc. that we can. He also shields his developers from the bureaucracy, which is a MAJOR plus -- he pretty much takes care of all administrative details, leaving us developers with very few interruptions to us doing what we're paid to do.
As a result, our team consistently puts out the best products in the shortest time with the best documentation.
In short, he's a great boss.
Sure, I have some gripes about work -- my coworkers annoy the shit out of me sometimes, especially my officemate, but they're largely competent and easy enough to get along with. I have major issues with our development platform -- we use the .NET environment and I HATE it because it's sloppy and ugly and generally awful -- but it's something I can't change (har har, federal standards and contracts, lawl) and have gotten used to working around. But really, I'm lucky in my job. I'm paid well, I got great benefits out of it, some of them for life (401k *CHEERS WILDLY*), I'm gaining valuable experience, and I enjoy working here.
Honestly.
It's just that I've been feeling kind of like crap lately, due to school drama and pointy-things-in-my-mouth drama and family drama. I'd forgotten that work is actually fun.
So here's the deal with the footnote up there about being more excited to be alive again:
(1) I've been pretty depressed lately, which really isn't anything new or exciting. I've actually decided to see a therapist for the first time since I was forced to by my counselor in high school. And I wanted to honestly give it a shot this time, since I wasn't so hot on the idea as a teenager. I'm not sure if it's helping or what... it's at least interesting to talk everything out with my therapist, though so far it's really just been me talking a lot, with very little therapy work being done. But then, I have a lot to talk about when it comes to explaining why I'm depressed. I mean, I've talked straight through each and every hour-long therapy session so far (I've had five, I think, so that means I have talked for five full hours) and we're still not done with the background information.
On the bright side, he did in fact confirm the diagnosis: I am indeed depressed and not just making it up! That's actually good to know, because I wonder sometimes if I'm not just being silly and oversensitive or something. But apparently, no, there's something pretty wrong with my head! Believe it or not this is reassuring information for me.
Anyway. So I've been pretty depressed. I've had a lot of reasons, but it immediately got worse after I came home for vacation. For one, I was with my family again, and that's a whole host of issues in itself. For another, my boss was on vacation and I had little to motivate me at work.
Oh. That's right. I also had surgery to look forward to.
I had my first surgery on Friday last: I got all four wisdom teeth pulled. I was VERY nervous beforehand because (a) FIRST SURGERY (b) NEEDLES INVOLVED (c) they were going to FUCK WITH MY MOUTH. For those not in the know, I have an embarrassingly strong needle phobia (can't even watch people get shots in movies) and an extremely sensitive mouth (very sensitive to pain, heat, and flavour -- for example, drinks that are just warm to others will literally BURN me -- turn red and puff up and everything). So I think it's pretty understandable that I was kind of twitchy about the whole thing.
But I went through with it and it went fine and hopefully I will never need oral surgery again. I'm super cranky about not being able to chew -- you just don't realize how orgasmic the act of chewing is until you can't do it for a week. Although I can't open my mouth far enough right now anyway -- in addition to having a sensitive mouth, I also have a very small jaw -- hell, I'm just a small person in general. So to get IN my mouth to do the surgery, they cranked my jaw WAY open -- pulling the corners of my mouth (which cracked and bled a bit) and doing SOMETHING to my jaw joints/muscles such that they're extremely sore and I can't open my mouth wide enough to fit a teaspoon in flatwise comfortably. I'm pretty tired of my bland diet and of the endless amounts of live-culture yogurt I have to eat to counterbalance the ridiculous antibiotics I've been given (SERIOUSLY THE PILLS ARE AN INCH LONG GUYS WHAT THE FUCK). I was also pretty put out by the pain meds I had to take for the first few days -- the Vicodin wasn't working for me so my mom gave me her old Percoset and man, that worked good. I hated it. I was completely loopy and high -- and really, I don't like the feeling of being drunk or high, especially when all I get to do is lie in bed and try to focus my eyes on the computer screen. In my view pretty much the only benefit of being unsober is how it lowers my level of social anxiety.
So. I've spent the last few days flopping around in bed, in pain, in my family's house, with nothing to do.
Small wonder I dropped like a rock into a depressive phase and started crying randomly -- I get depressed most easily when I fell I'm being unproductive, and when I'm too drugged to work and forbidden to even chew, yeah, that gets me pretty good. I see little point in life then -- nothing dramatic like being suicidal, I just get terminally uninterested and, well. Lie there and flop around like a fish. It's pretty sad. I'm still going through the Granddaddy of Existential Crises -- the "Why Am I Here?" one. I see little point in my existence unless I'm helping people or creating/producing something worthwhile. When I do too little of either I basically shut down until I manage to pull myself together to drag my ass out of it. It's pretty retarded, I guess. I'm working on it. But that's how I roll -- if I feel unhelpful and/or unproductive, I fall into a depressive state where I -- guess what! -- don't do anything, worsening the problem.
So I sloped back to work today and listlessly fiddled with my project. Then my boss showed up, critiqued what I had and gave me new assignments and suddenly I felt much better. I'm still in a depressive phase, I can tell, but I feel more active and productive, which will help put me on the road to something less ridiculous. I still have a long-term problem. I'm still refusing medication although it's quite obvious I have a chemical imbalance in my brain. But for now, I feel a little better.