Monday crap

Twenty minutes at work, and already I’ve given in to a pity party. There’s a whole pile of crap inside my head that I haven’t moved past yet, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

I’ve quickly turned on my upbeat music and that’s the only thing that’s helped since yesterday evening. Song 1: Don’t Worry About a Thing from SheDaisy, Song 2: Beautiful from Christina Aguilera. The tenseness in my stomach is relaxing.

I got upset over email, even though there’s nothing in it that’s disturbing. Last night I went through a bunch of photos from the past 5 years, trying to validate that my weight loss was visible. I could not see it, but it’s 50 pounds, for God’s sake! It ought to be visible.

Song 3: That’s Life from Michael Buble.

My excess weight once served me very well. It was protection and comfort rolled into one. Now it’s absolutely in the way of what I want. Fine, it’s coming off, but I’m greedy in wanting more loss faster. There’s only one way to come to that point, and that is to get my mind to take off another layer of whatever it is that keeps me eating enough to lose only slowly.

It’s remarkable how much other people are affected by your looks. Just looking “normal” makes you more accessible, and people judge you less. I believe I’ll upgrade my wardrobe a little to fit in wardrobe-wise, even if I’m larger than most.

I’m sensitive to feeling judged lately, because I had a meeting with someone who was just full of intense anger about the fact that I am better at his job than he is. Funny how people (me included) can become defensive in situations like that. I just sat in that meeting and listened, challenging him only when I felt I needed to. Looking back on the conversation, I see that he took every criticism I made very personally, telling me it was impossible to do the things I know are both possible and necessary. Poor guy, I pity him to some extent. He took my plan to improve things as an attack, and didn’t hear a word. Maybe he’ll turn around in a few months. Maybe not. That’s his problem. I’ve currently written his department off in terms of my helping them get better (a big part of my job).

I also get these crappy feelings when I don’t know how to do something, and this one’s important in terms of how much raise I get in February. I have to be able to verbalize my achievements but I have a hugely hard time claiming “I did x” when I didn’t do it all the way alone. I’m at the point this year where I’m just going to accept a lower raise and work on improving this skill next year.

Song 6: Enough is Enough, Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer.

Back to work.