Rough Day of Learning

Today was a hard day. I had some difficult things to learn, and some more trivial ones.

1. I discovered the kind of adult I don't want to be. I don't want to be the kind that is constantly in the HR office complaining. I don't want to be the kind that is 40 years old but never seems to have grown out of the high school mentality of coming up with petty excuses for every little thing. Own up to your mistakes. You're an adult, for crying out loud, and not even a young adult anymore. It's my personal opinion that people will have a lot more respect for you if you recognize you did something wrong, apologize, and try to fix it in the future than if you try to weasel out of it by bringing up every excuse in the book.

I guess the real lesson here is - there are lots of adults who never really gained much maturity. Don't be one of them.

2. I realized that part of why I was so depressed at work was because I never knew who was going to ask me to do what and I was completely and utterly dependent on everyone else ordering me around. I didn't even know enough of what needed to be done to do anything on my own initiative. It isn't that kind of a job, most of the time. It's not like there's general "stuff" that I need to do. It's more - if someone asks me to do something, I'm there to do it for them. But lately the main guy I work for has been bringing me down to the basement to do some serious cleaning up in a storage room. It is filled - literally FILLED - from floor to ceiling with file cabinets and a gazillion dusty old cardboard boxes. Every corner of the room is stuffed. When we first started, you could hardly walk in through the door. The air conditioner couldn't work because everything was piled so high. So we worked for a while clearing stuff out, throwing stuff out, filing a lot of stuff they still need to keep, etc. Today, I got sent back down there with another person who was supposed to help me (they didn't want to leave me down there alone, thankfully, which is why they got the other person). And I was sort of in charge there because I knew what I was told to do and I had to direct the other person. And as much as I didn't like what we were doing, I liked being in charge of someone else. I liked knowing exactly what needed to be done because that meant I could do it my way and I didn't have to rely on someone else telling me how to do it. I liked having that independence and freedom of being in complete control of what I was doing. It's interesting, though, because in a crowd, I'm waaay too timid to actually take charge. I'd feel like I was taking it away from someone else who was more qualified or just better. But I like it when I have my moments.

3. Weirdly, I have never been given a ton of mussar in my life. Not real mussar that was meant for me, personally. I've given other people mussar, but I rarely have to take it. It's not that there's not anything about me to criticize, because there is, but I usually don't allow myself to open up enough to give people reason to give me any mussar. I guess because I'm afraid of it. The only people who really give me mussar are my parents and I know I always end up extremely upset and nearly in tears when they do it. So today when a good friend started giving me mussar, I realized just how bad I am at taking it. I have to learn to be stronger. I know I do. I'm way too sensitive. I have to learn that being criticized does not mean I'm in a fight. And I definitely do know that as much as I dislike receiving mussar because it's hard, I'd be really pretty scared if people stopped doing it. Because that would mean they no longer cared. Just thinking about everyone no longer caring makes me feel really cold. So maybe it's not so bad to feel all fired up after receiving a mussar speech. I need to hear it. And it's better than that empty feeling of no one caring enough.

4. People generally don't bite over the phone. I had to make ten phone calls today and I am sooooo very phone shy (it's a big deal if I can talk to someone on the phone. I get nervous even before calling my friends). But I called every single one. Not all of them picked up, but enough did that I still felt proud of myself afterwards.

5. Don't eat too many spicy fries for dinner. It's a little nauseating.

6. The Marvelous Midos Machine is a LOT more classic than I thought it was. And it's really fun to start a whole statii trend. That's part of number two, I think. Liking to know I have an effect on people - even in something as simple as inspiring lots of fun statii. :) But in more serious stuff, too, obviously.