Kim, I want you to pay special attention to this post. 
Last night E. and I were talking about my job. Now, I am going to avoid getting into specifics here of course, but essentially we were discussing whether my job causes undue stress in and of itself, or if I create stress for myself by being a Type A- personality. (E., not to put words in your mouth, attempting to sum up) I pondered over this and decided ultimately before bed that perhaps it’s a bit of both. However, I work from home on my own schedule and my employer is super-understanding of difficult personal circumstances with ALL of us and I am incredibly lucky in that capacity. Mostly, I love my job, I just began to wonder recently if it was taking a toll on my health. After all, shingles is largely activated by stress.
Well, I came to find out that one of my co-workers was in the hospital last week for a condition that’s not fully been diagnosed but seems to be a form of collitis. As an HR employee, when anything more serious than a cold or flu spreads through an office I begin to largely suspect stress is at play. Nevermind that this person and I carry the heaviest workloads of the team.
I am connecting dots that may not necessarily connect. But I did joke to my co-worker that our boss is going to think we’re having nervous breakdowns, and after another co-worker commented that surely we both had stress-induced illnesses, I began to wonder if I’m really reaching on this or not.
So, knowing that at least in part this stress is self-induced, how can I tone my A- self to a B+ at least?
Here is one area where working from home does NOT help. Often at night before bed I check my work e-mail. I shouldn’t do that, but I don’t like to be surprised in the morning.
I keep saying I’m going to turn the ringer off on my phone after a certain hour but I don’t. That’s bad.
Tonight I was going to work on travel arrangements for some candidates on the East Coast. The reason is I am waiting for the hiring manager’s schedule and I probably won’t have that until later. Once I do, I can move forward. When we are talking about things like travel, you have to move fast, especially with flights being what they are. Could I wait until the morning? Sure, but likely I will think about it all night and wonder if/how we are going to get everyone in.
One of the things I really do love about my job is that it’s challenging. I’m only bored when the work slows down. And I HATE being bored on a job, that’s the worst to me. So mostly I am not bored. That’s good.
I realize no job is worth your health. And few jobs are life or death. But for a straight-A, only-child, people-pleaser who LOVES to be oh so good, it is really hard not to hang so much of my own value on how good I am at…well, anything.
Perhaps I should work on being a master-relaxer instead??
To bastardize Kapgar’s term, SUA*: I deleted a very whiny post from yesterday explaining this, but I talked to my doctor yesterday. Well, another doctor in the practice that I’ve seen b/c mine wasn’t available. Anyhoot, he said the antiviral I was taking causes an adverse reaction of nausea & vomitting in a high number of patients who take it. So I probably had an adverse reaction to that medication. Why so late in the game? Because it wasn’t until Friday that it had accrued enough to actually cause a reaction.
*Sort of Unrelated Aside
Posted by wafelenbak 