Okay, Tuesday is going to be stressful, potentially. That’s my initial lead into the day, is that everything is always a maybe. We prep for the worst, then hope it doesn’t happen. Sometimes it doesn’t!
The worst would be me imploding at work. I don’t know if I could come back from that, as generous as the people around me are. I don’t want to find out because the shame would be more agony than whatever they did to me.
I’m on front desk duty this week, the frontline defense of our department. I deescalate and present bad news as not so bad on a regular day, and how do you think tomorrow will be?
Add on that there’s a major string of theft going on with our clients, our clients being defrauded and all we can do is react. We have to work through our whole community and it is taking quite awhile. Every release day there’s another influx of people just finding out they’ve been skimmed. The 5th is a release day.
I’m not sure what the whole conservative state election day will have, but it just being the 5th of November will be enough of a challenge. It being the first clear day after three days of severe storms would be enough. We’ll all be on edge.
However, it’s about where the focus is put. A high stress time like this requires high focus. Whatever I do tomorrow, I will exceed expectations. Whatever comes out of tomorrow, I will come out of it relatively okay. I might be tired, I might get frustrated, and I may hate humanity at the end of the day. These are fixable problems. Yet keeping a focus on my safety and the safety of those I care about is something I can control.
That’s the key with anxiety, grabbing whatever control you can.
Here’s another thing, I get a lot of people predicting catastrophe, but I should be so lucky it probably isn’t going to happen. I mean, if Y2K had surprised more people, I probably would have my doctorate by now. See, my dad did corrective code for that ahead of the crisis. However, if things had been worse, maybe there would have been more repair work for him to do afterwards.
So it was that which spoiled me; the world keeps not ending, the country too. It sure sells a lot of stuff when people think it’s going to, but that doesn’t make it so. The day after tomorrow will probably be remarkably like today.
My distrust is my strongest weapon against my fear. How many times have I been afraid of something that didn’t matter? Too many. So now when my fear response happens, I still notice but with skepticism. Sure you’re afraid, but is it warranted?
Things might get harder, but that wouldn’t be anything new at all. They might stay the same and they might get easier. Those are the three permutations of difficulty.
I just needed to give myself a little pep talk, because I am nervious about 11/5. I’m struggling to settle down to sleep, but I know when 5 PM comes tomorrow the workday will end…… and when 7 PM comes the polls close.
I already know everything I want to do tomorrow, so there’s nothing to be worried about not happening. Focus, control, goal oriented.
TBH, I’ll probably order myself those shoes at the end of tomorrow, I might have earned it.