Ensuring That No One Eats a Dead Mouse

Yesterday was a tumultuous day.

I had many meetings, a new request came in every ten minutes. I changed my messaging status to show that I was busy, which as far as I knew had zero effect whatsoever. Some of the meetings were ambush meetings that I had not asked for, and one of them resulted in a massive new task being heaped on my plate. And one of the meetings was plunked straight into the first half of the hour which I had actually planned to spend cycling to eastern Berlin for a nice restaurant visit with colleagues.

Then it turned out that due to a Covid case, 3 colleagues needed to cancel and the office seemed to have been semi-evacuated. Which meant that I had no idea how to make it to all of my meetings (the conference rooms at the office being my best option for handling the last calls before the restaurant meal) and still materialize at the restaurant in the appointed time. But more importantly it was a little doubtful if it was safe or purposeful to proceed at all. So in the end we called it off.

By the time that was done, I was so tense and frustrated by the bombardment of tasks with massive consequences, and on the verge of tears, that I called in sick for the rest of the day. The team, as always, was lovely, expressed concern, and offered practical help.

I think the analogy for the current way my fellow team leader and I are being treated is this: It's like trying to use a new operating system to get a task done on your computer and figure out if it's working for you. But people are constantly harassing you with advice to use another operating system, or upgrade to this version, or research that tool ... They might mostly all be right. But the task never gets done and you now also have dozens of hours of additional research on your plate, and no real idea how effective your current operating system is. And the lack of respect for time and effort already invested is totally galling.

In one case, the dynamic even feels (and I'm being pretty satirical here, so take it with a grain of salt) like interacting with a two-year-old child who nudges me in the middle of doing something else and wants me to eat something. You have to pay attention, to see if the 'food' they're altruistically offering in their grimy little hand is a dead mouse, a dishwasher tablet, or legitimate food, before someone is poisoned. There are people who specialize in these types of situations. But I'm not a kindergarten teacher.

It turned out that my uncle came over to visit, so we hashed out some of my workplace concerns. Pursuant to his advice, I've tried considering the 'stakeholders' outside my team as clients, and treating them accordingly. Which I think is needed, because in the absence of personal trust I need to make sure that the professional trust is there.

Then I had a long call with another colleague, which calmed me down considerably too.

I stayed awake until after 3 a.m. watching a series of videos released by my parent company, not related to technical things but rather to industry ideals. Then I woke up at 8:30 a.m., I think. My stomach still felt tense and I was so physically exhausted that I was tottering around for a few minutes when getting out of bed, and wondered (melodramatically) if I should pull up my laptop to my bedside and work from there.

But I've temporarily made my peace with things. While I feel that anger is not a nice emotion to have, it is sometimes justified; and if I try to escape it I will wimp out of reacting proportionately. One thing that is not good, though, is actually losing sleep about it.

That said, the things that are happening lately are so absurd that I laughed at them even during the height of the storm yesterday. The colleague of the long video call emphasized that they were not funny ... but I laughed again.

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In artistic news, at any rate, I angry-played a few German Dances by Beethoven yesterday, but decided not to reach for a Rachmaninov prelude. So things aren't that dramatic.