Tag Archives: stress

Non-fiction

Where Did It Go?

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I’m writing every morning but have run out of content, so the only way to produce is to regurgitate the old. But even that has slipped my mind. So now I’m left with nothing but mashed potatoes in my brain. I feel like I’m dead if death is how this feels. Maybe I should write once a week, so then I’ll have something to write about instead of once a day.

There are certain thoughts I can’t mention. Only my journal and therapist know. But I bet it would be interesting. Readers would gobble up that type of shit, but it can’t be written, which is unfortunate. How many secrets do people keep? I wish there were none at all.

I have a dark mind. There’s nothing about it that’s light. A kid in high school used to call me pessimistic. Not that word exactly, just negative. And he was right. I didn’t like that kid, never did. His name was Ben too. I don’t know what happened to him. I can do a quick Google search if I want, but I won’t. I remember he had the same girlfriend from freshman to senior year. How did he do that? He played soccer and had red hair. He used to be nice in junior high before he turned into a prick and called me names I didn’t appreciate. I forgot what those names were, but they weren’t pleasant. How the hell did I think of him this morning? How random. He rode the school bus with me and would harass me by calling me negative, and I had nothing to say.

I learned my negativity from my father, who was negative all the time and is still. Whenever I visit him, he always has something negative to say about mostly everything, and he brings me and my mother down. My mother would say, “Quit being so negative.” But it wouldn’t stop my father, and I caught his illness. So now I see the dark side of things, and it doesn’t really help. Maybe he was being more of a realist, and my mother has always been too much of an optimist. She was that way always. I guess the dark side has always been more convincing to me.

But anyway, I’ll just stick with today’s agenda. It’s Monday, another long week ahead of sales. I have to sell products no one wants, and I have to sell enough to meet the quota expectations. I hate that word: expectations. It really makes the pressure heavier. They expect me to sell these products and I expect me not to care. The job has robbed me of my imagination through stress, and so I struggle every day.

I don’t know what else to do. I could be a better salesperson, but sales was something I never wanted to get into. I just ended up that way because the company has switched me to so many roles. So this was where I landed. They inundate me with too many cases and other assignments, not to mention the pile of emails I have to answer each day. The pile only gets deeper, and I can never catch up. If I was still drinking, I’m sure the drinking would get worse. But that problem was something I got over. It didn’t solve everything.

Now the problems have changed. I look for other jobs, but all the websites like LinkedIn and Indeed and Glassdoor offer are jobs of the same type because of my resume. So it’s hard to change careers. And now that I’m over forty it’s difficult even more. Businesses post disclaimers that they’re equal opportunity and they accept those who are disabled and over forty. At the same time, in the application, they ask for my ethnicity, how old I am, and if I’m disabled. If they were equal opportunity, then why would they need to know? Wouldn’t it not matter? What am I missing? It’s hard to balance all this stress with what I hope to do. I’ve lost what I really wanted.

Non-fiction

The Annual Compliance Harassment Video

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I journal every morning as part of my morning routine. Paper isn’t my friend and never was. I’ve never enjoyed journaling, but it’s necessary like getting a checkup. You might get what I’m saying.

I journal to get my thoughts on paper like anyone does for the same reason. It’s better to do it that way than not to do it at all. Why am I sitting at this table and writing at six in the morning? Am I insane? Shouldn’t I be asleep right now? Maybe I should. But life doesn’t work that way. I woke up at one and then close to four in the morning before my alarm eventually went off at five in the morning. If I set my alarm for six, I could get more rest, but it doesn’t work that way as I said. I have too many worries.

My job, for instance, is a big stressor in my life. I worry about whom I have to call, and if they’re going to yell at me. I never know whom I’m going to get.

I had to watch a harassment training video yesterday brought to me by the HR department. It’s an annual compliance video they make me watch, full of bad actors who portray abusive employees at a company. The days are gone when you could date your coworkers. I guess I see the point from human resources. They want people to come to work without complications, but it doesn’t stop people from breaking the rules.

There was one scene where a transgender person posted a video on social media complaining that their coworker called them the wrong name because it was gender-specific. The training video said that what the transgender person did was right, posting the video on social media. I had to disagree. They should’ve complained to human resources instead of doing what they did, but that’s just me.

Every example, from sexual misconduct to racial insensitivity, ended up with the answer of reporting it to human resources. That was the big lesson learned through the hour-and-a-half-long video.

In one scene, a coworker told a joke involving a priest, a pregnant woman, and a Hispanic person to two other coworkers. A Hispanic lady walked by the room in the middle of the joke. The scene paused so that the voiceover person could explain that what the joke-teller was doing was wrong.

They continued the video right where the joke-teller delivered the punchline, “So the priest says, ‘What’s that speed bump doing there?'”

Everyone laughed except the Hispanic woman who walked by, rolling her eyes. I never got to hear the full joke, but speed bumps are typically funny. I laugh inside whenever I see a car hop one.

In another scene, a woman in her thirties, I would guess, showed an old man how to use the internet at work. After she helped him, she walked away and posted on social media that she was tired of helping old folks with technology and that they should retire already.

The video cut to the next scene, where the old man read what she’d posted and shook his head in offense. It was hard to believe that she would post something like that if she knew the old man followed her on there. I doubt he would’ve done anything anyway.

I felt guilty after watching it, even though I work remotely, not in the office, and I never even did anything wrong. I answered the questions to a quiz at the end of every scene correctly. They awarded me with a certificate at the end. It was painful to watch, but at least I didn’t have to do any work for an hour and a half.