Monday,
February 18, 2002

I am such a wimp when it comes to work

I'm sick, mind you. I have a prescription to prove it. I have sinuses full of bacteria, a throat that could be used to grate cheese, and this screen keeps going all swimmy at the oddest moments.

And yet, I dragged my ass into work this afternoon, because I was supposed to get the help pages finished and off to San Francisco by tonight. Which, by the way, didn't happen, but Cthulu knows I gave it the old college try, I honestly did.

It's weird -- the Europeans not only think we're insane for going into work when we're sick, they think we're downright rude for doing it because we're exposing our colleagues to our germs. There are times when I really wish the Australians had gotten the Puritans and we'd gotten the criminals. It might've been more dangerous over the long run, but this damn Protestant work ethic is going to wind up killing more people than guns and knives ever did.

Digging in the dirt

This seems to be a week of introspection for a lot of people. A number of my favorite journalers are doing some serious-ass introspection of their lives -- what's more, they're either doing something about the things that are bothering them or have already done something and are feeling the effects of recovery.

I think part of the reason why I felt so lousy today is that I spent a good chunk of last night doing some introspection of my own. In the process, I stumbled across a personal realization that, while not astounding, did ring clearly with the peal of truth (and probably saved me beaucoup bucks and years in therapy). My truth -- I am waaaaaay too eager to sacrifice my own happiness and peace of mind in order to please people -- I'll sublimate anger, frustration and other things that bother me because I don't want to upset or hurt people around me. In fact, I realized that Iwas taking a rather bitter sort of satisfaction in my /m/a/r/t/y/r/d/o/m self-sacrifice. And meanwhile all these negative emotions sit at the bottom of my gut, festering as they bubble away in the darkness.

So I decided to do the sane thing -- I'm going to start being honest with people about my needs, my feelings and what I want as opposed to what I think they want me to do. I started off by telling the Man from McKinney that I was too damn sick to drive him to the airport. I shouldn't have been, really, but I still was surprised when he was okay with it.

Encouraged by this, I came home from work tonight (still reeling from the effects of my antibiotics doing battle with the Green Menace in my sinuses) and had a long talk with the Bodacious Brit about things that have been bothering me for a long time. It was good -- he didn't know about some of them (in fact, a quote was, "I wish you'd told me about this five years ago"), and in turn told me things that have been bothering him for a long time, as well.

And now, I feel -- well, better. Something like this doesn't fix itself overnight, and we will probably still be talking about things for some time as they come to light, but. . .I feel better.

Man, that's nice.