Moods anxious frustrated
3 min read
I have a bit of time before my work day starts with an internal call, so I’m writing this after playing a bit of Factorio this morning to try to distract myself. I don’t think work has ever had this much of an impact on me outside of work hours before. Sure, there have been times when I’ve worked longer hours (I’m looking at my you, 109% utilization this past quarter), but this is a different feeling. My anxiety isn’t directly related to the job that I’m doing or the product that I’m creating. That was earlier on in the project. Right now, I feel like my stress and anxiety are solely about the interpersonal interactions between me and the client. I tend to take things too personally when I feel like my work is being attacked or my credibility and skills are being questioned. I suppose both of those stem from the pride I have in my work. I’m not sure I’d still feel this way if that was all though. On top of that, there’s a lot of gaslighting going on from the executive sponsor at the client and there are implications that we aren’t doing a good enough job. Additionally, after months of work (which included pull request approvals and code reviews), the architect on the client side is suggesting we make a significant change to part of the architecture while we are weeks away from a go-live date.
All of that piles up and I find my brain going back to the day’s conversations and events and playing them on loops. It’s trying to analyze every piece to…well I don’t know what it’s looking for or trying to do. It’s all part of that background process in my brain that usually solves problems quietly when I’m watching YouTube videos at night to go to sleep. It’s usually very unintrusive unless there’s something important to bring to my attention. I can’t seem to shut it off for any period of time. I’ll lay there watching or listening to a video I’ve already watched a few times and it starts playing back the tapes from the day in the back of my mind. I go along with it for a bit, but then I try to switch my attention back to the video. That works for a few moments, but then it’s almost like there’s this drift back to the stuff from the day. It’s like one of those wonky shopping carts at Walmart that really want to steer to one side or the other. You can try to correct it by pushing differently, but that only works for a moment before it desires to go to the left again.
I’m not sure what to do right now and it feels intrusive to the point of not being acceptable. I’m usually good enough at compartmentalizing work and putting it behind me when I leave my home office for the day. At worst, it’s usually just that background process of solving a tricky coding or design problem. But those aren’t bad, at least to me. Those are somewhat enjoyable and I like when there’s that “Ah ha!” moment, I scribble it down, and then go on with my evening. This is different and I don’t like it.
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