Misery in November

Today was a strenuous day, where I did intense work and also had to analyze how and where things went wrong, answered questions as usual (which was mostly enjoyable), and compiled reports on our progress on various tasks until 6:30 or so, which wasn't terribly late. I ate lunch and talked with the colleagues in my team, and even read a little news during the lunch hour; and because I ate only for 20 minutes also drafted an appeal letter related to an Amnesty International 'urgent action.' The hard, environmentally unfriendly and humanly exploitative work of preparing for the frenzy of Black Friday has made me so uneasy that I feel the need to do something in between just to rebalance my senses of proportion and of worthy aims, and to connect to a real and humane need.

In the evening I realized that a task I thought was done was not done. After standing at the window in the kitchen to gather myself and think how to tackle the task independently, I decided that I was rational and strong enough to ask for advice from the older-brother-ish colleague. In the end, the discussion will be postponed to tomorrow.

That said, I felt guilty in retrospect because of a remark I'd made earlier today to 'my' team: we were speaking of the weather, and I said (more or less) that doing work for the task-that-was-not-done-after-all client more or less replaces the necessity of seeking warmer climates amid these winter days, because being in hell is warm enough. It was perhaps more truthful than professional. And perhaps I was tempting fate.

At 6:55 p.m. I went outside in the dark to do the 30 minutes of walking and running for this week. Now I am at intervals of 30 seconds of running followed by 30 seconds of walking. It was snowing, and at first my spirits lifted, but then I realized that the snow was melting in my hair and that I was cold; also, I had relatively low energy. Like drinking alcohol liberally, I suppose, endurance sports (if one can dignify my beginner's training by that name) are more terrible and painful if one's spirits are already drained or made aggressive by negative thoughts. Toward the end my run, the knee that I bruised falling on the sidewalk on Mehringdamm hurt, but so little and it could have been so much worse that I pitied myself just half-heartedly. There were many other joggers out, so I wasn't alone.

It has been bad for my morale to think that no matter how hard I work before Black Friday, what I have to anticipate after that is a forensic inspection of my team. It is suspected of being inefficient by the management. The inspection is being postponed until afterward because everyone is so busy. It feels like one harrowing ordeal will be followed by another. While I always feel insecure about whether I'm doing things precisely and enough, in this case I'm not certain the inspection is deserved or if it's based on misunderstandings. I don't like to defend myself, especially because I don't want to force people to take my word when the facts speak for themselves, and because I don't want to justify myself if it might mean throwing doubt on other colleagues' descriptions of the situation; and I don't want to waste brain power on that drama when I could be making sure that the workload is done instead.

Anyway, as I told myself during the run, there are things in life that you can comfortably know that you can do; you just need to realize that at the same time you shouldn't expect them to be easy and be surprised if they aren't.

Before I left, the only other two colleagues in the office left together and wished me goodbye, but I had the distinct impression they were displeased about something, which is awkward because they were the managers. Then I went out into the cold, too. The U-Bahn had a Betriebsstörung, I left the warmth to walk to the nearby S-Bahn station, the S-Bahn came promptly, I missed the connecting train by 20 seconds or fewer, and therefore walked the last ten to fifteen minutes home rather than wait 9 minutes in the frosty temperatures. It was not my day. I have to admit that I am also cranky and angry in general. But I did make progress in the Sartre.

Also, Ge. had cooked cream of wheat pudding for dinner, Mama and I watched (in my case) excerpts of Miss Fisher's Mysteries, and an ex-colleague wrote me a beautiful email that I just discovered this evening. And I'm really glad to be at home, but trembling in my boots at the thought of tomorrow. I also need to make sure that everyone in the team has plenty to do, because today there was speak of being at a loss, and I definitely get in trouble if people are at a loss for things to do even if we are supposedly buried under work. The problem is just that there are tasks that are so intricate that sometimes I don't even know if it's 'my' team that should be working on fixing them.