This week was a doozy. Like, I still have a headache from two days ago kind of week. My job isn’t always like this, so I don’t want to complain about that. It’s just…well, I worked so many late nights and early mornings the past month… I’m just really tired. The big project is done, but it seriously kicked my ass. And maybe, possibly, turned me into a psychotic co-worker.
I know, I know…you’re not supposed to blog about work. But YOU GUYS. I’m not sure how it’s possible, but I’m equal parts proud and horrified over my bat-shit-crazy behavior yesterday.
Now, I’ve worked on this big project for way longer than a month, as I fit in different parts of it between my “regular” job. But for the past 3-4 weeks? A LOT of time has been spent leading up to yesterday when I would finally finish and pass it on. My stress level was a bit high but the knowledge of ONE DAY MORE gave me that light at the end of the tunnel feeling. Even getting to the office at 6:30 (in the A.M.) had me optimistic about what I could get done before noon. I had positive, you’ve got this, kick ass kind of music playing in the earbuds. I WAS GOING TO KICK SOME SERIOUS PROJECT ASS.
And then the power went out. At 7:45am.
I do believe my heart actually stopped for a few seconds as I stared at that blank computer screen. I knew that I had been saving religiously, but what if my forms and spreadsheets didn’t recover properly? It’s a finicky form to begin with…would something happen to my file? ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME WITH THIS RIGHT NOW????
Something in me snapped.
Every bad word tripped and fell out of my mouth in record time. EVERY. BAD. WORD. Any foul word you can think of, and probably some that I made up right then and there. I said them all. LOUDLY.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I’m any sort of angel with the cleanest of all the mouths, but I can honestly say that I’ve never shouted obscenities to an office full of people.
Much like the words that flew out of my mouth that escaped before I even knew what happened, hot tears streamed down my face. Which only seemed to pissed me off more. So I think I said more bad words just to make the tears stop.
I guess I should just be glad that the office wasn’t full since it was only 7:45. And I’m lucky that most the people around me knew that I had been working on this project for so long and for so, so many hours. Most of them.
This is where I probably shouldn’t admit that I was thisclose to punching a coworker in the neck when this person thought it would be funny to try and joke me out of my tantrum. And shine a flashlight in my face. But since I just typed that out and I’m not sure I’m going to delete it, just know that also happened.
My rage was fierce. And my stress level. But OMG MY RAGE WAS SO FIERCE.
Luckily the power came back on about 30 minutes later. Plenty of time for the swears to mellow, but more time for me to stress out about everything I WASN’T accomplishing. But the happy ending to our story is that I DID finish the project. It did have more things to modify and it took all damn day to iron all of those things out, but today I officially wash my hands of this project. Until next year anyway.
Monday marks the start of my busy time at work, so I may or may not be taking my sweet time this morning getting to the office. (Don’t freak out, I totally scheduled it CALM DOWN.) I’m going to finish writing this and then I should probably get in the shower.
Or not.
My headache JUST started going away. Maybe sitting here at home is just what I needed.