Killing Carmen San Diego

[lilmissnever]

I'm not going to lie to you, my largely theoretical readers--I have suspected for quite some time that being Carmen San Diego is not good for me. For a long time, I thought that I had bigger problems. My eye exploded. J and I spent most of a very stressful year gutting and remodeling Bunker 3. Then I traveled. And I traveled. And I traveled. In

Comments

[kryscat]

Sanity (in moderation) is good. I'm glad you're taking care of yourself.

[ilcylic]

*hug*

See you this weekend! :D

[lilmissnever]

Send me your itinerary so I know when to pick you up, mister.

[rezendi]

(applause)

[elusis]

Put your own oxygen mask on first before assisting with those who depend on you.

[lilmissnever]

I am surprised at how hard it is to do this. It's been helpful to realize that my work culture is really dysfunctional--the Mysterious Workplace has this problem, but the broader globe-trotting "Internet Freedom" scene makes it many, many times worse.

[thewronghands]

Anything where you're always in crisis response mode is going to. And there really always is a crisis somewhere.

Imagine being a president. Guh. You know you're dropping a hundred thousand packets all the time, because there is just an infinite firehose of highly crucial things to do. Triage. Breathe. Go to the gym. Because you can give everything you have and become a wrung-out beef jerky towel of a human being and there will still be more crisis. So in the spirit of "it mattered to that one", yeah. It is super hard but also necessary.

[ladykalessia]

The sense of urgency does it, I think. But what someone finally said to me when my shittily-managed, illegally-badly-led team was so far underwater I was about to have my own nervous breakdown, is that it's a firehose. There are an infinite number of docs that could be written, just like there are an infinite number of conferences (and consequently conference afterparties at which to drink). You have to take out a little cup (I personally imagine the cute little hammered-aluminum ones used for mint juleps), and hold it up to the hose, and take as much as you can fit in the cup. There will always be more. But at some point you give yourself hyponatremia and at that point who are you helping anymore? That water isn't going to drink itself.

Yeah. That metaphor gets a little tortured.

I'm glad you've found a therapist. It was one of the more helpful things I've ever done for myself.

[thewronghands]

I laughed out loud at "my largely theoretical readers". [grin] If LJ is in its ebb tide, at least we can laugh about it. Best of luck with the stress management; it's something I have to remind myself to take time to do as well.

[lilmissnever]

It's actually picked up a bit. My LJ was a ghost town for a while--not that I have any right to complain, I didn't write much. These days I still don't write that often, but I don't necessarily feel like I'm shouting into the ether.