Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Owie, boo-boo belly!

Next time I’ll have someone drive me, just in case things go a little bit south like they did yesterday.  I was given 250 mg of IV hydrocortisone before the Remicade, in hopes of avoiding the serum-sickness reaction, and it gave me an unbelievable stomach ache.  First it was just a little heartburn but it grew into a burning from my throat all the way down, and pains in my intestines (not in the usual place where the Crohn’s is, but all through them) that remain even today.

The nurse gave me some Mylanta, which helped for about a minute.  I went into the rest room at one point, and ended up getting really dizzy… so I put myself down on the floor before I fell down.  I broke out in a sweat and when I came out Susan (the nurse) said I was very pale.  I didn’t take any Benadryl in the morning, because I had to drive, so the itching got pretty bad too.  My hands were the worst, and my palms were beet red.  Ultimately Dr. C asked them to give me 25 mg of Benadryl, and to keep me there for a couple hours after the infusion ended.  I took it, and promptly passed out, rocking back and forth on my side because my stomach hurt so bad.  Once I came to, I walked around a little bit to wake up and then got the hell out of there as quickly as I could.  Driving on the 405 freeway at 4:00 in the afternoon is no picnic, and I wanted to get home so I could ail in peace in my own house, in my comfy clothes that don’t squeeze my belly.

Even though I’ve still got gut pains from hell, I’ll go in to work today.  It’s my turn to take the pager, and I feel bad that my colleagues have been having to take on my work so often lately.  Intellectually, I know it’s not my fault that I’m sick and that medical leave exists so that people like me can have time to take care of themselves without worrying that they’ll be out of a job just because they’re ill; but I place so much value on my ability to do my job (or perhaps it’s just that going to work is how I get the paycheck that allows me to take care of my family) that it’s really difficult for me to admit when I’m not up to the task.  I hate letting people down, and I REALLY hate it when my body betrays me and I get so sick that it’s just impossible to even fake my way through the work I have to do.

Today I’ll do my best to work through the pain, and just hope that it goes away soon.  Maybe I’ll be lucky and it’ll end up being just some huge fart that needs to make its way out.  Man, y’know you’re getting old when a fart’s something to look forward to!

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Damn, I need a vacation

I spent a couple days in the perfect place for one, but it’s hard to “relax” when your heart’s just not in it… or more accurately, when your brain simply refuses to disengage from those thoughts that weigh heavily, because they’re “unresolved issues.” Coming from as large a family as I do, issues are legion; the usual internal ones that are directly related to me and my daily life, and those that are created for me simply by being issues for people I love.

Nearly every problem in my family could be resolved with nothing more complicated than the simple, unvarnished truth.  The whole fucking clan needs to take a tab of E (the original version, used in therapy) and get gabbing.  The past is what it is, everyone did what they had to do to survive… and not a friggin’ one of us gets through life without making foolish decisions or mistakes.  Who CARES?  I’ve done many things in my life I’m not proud of, but I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to perpetuate a web of lies to cover them up.  Jesus, we’re all a product of whatever choices we made in life up until this moment.  If my fuckups can serve as a lesson that’ll keep anyone else (most especially loved ones) from making the same mistakes and save someone a heartache, I’ll be the first to point out the ugly consequences of some of my choices.  I’ll take the chance that someone might be shocked or offended; it’s infinitely preferable to being thought a liar… or worse, being seen as some sort of paragon of virtue while aggressively guarding as secrets the less stellar moments of my life.  Too much pressure.

Life up ‘til now created Obnoxious Bitch, and the lack of truth and communication in my family is probably the largest influence.  Repression there makes expression here a must.  Or my fucking head will explode.

Monday, July 05, 2004

“There will be consequences…”

Not sure exactly what they’ll be, but I’ll face them as the adult I am, since they’re the fruits of my fuck-up.

And boy, I fucked up HARD.  Not only did I make a ridiculously stupid mistake, but I violated a policy and the mistake took down our biggest site for the better part of a night and day.  For lack of a slash (you’d think I’d have learned that lesson by now).

A combination of things contributed to my fuck-up: Way too much work to do, wanting to finish something that had been requested almost a month earlier, copying and pasting code someone else wrote without going over it with a fine tooth comb, and the final, fatal mistake was staging the updated file without making sure it worked… on a Friday at 5PM no less, which is a violation of our policy.  Worse yet, the changes I made weren’t even critical to the site; total low-priority updates to SEO text.  I’m pretty sure I looked at the page after staging the changes, but even if I did, there’s a good chance the file I looked at was still a working, but CACHED, version.  In truth, there’s no excuse for my violating the no-staging-after-2-on-Fridays policy, other than that I stupidly took for granted that these three lines of code (a simple NOSCRIPT entry that feeds the SE spiders) were likely to be just as valid as the other code I’d just put on 10 other pages.  Except this code wasn’t right; the tag wasn’t closed and it caused nothing but a blank page to be served.  Shoot me now.

So my manager called me in on Friday to tell me about the situation, asked me how it happened and whether or not there was anything else I had to say that might somehow exonerate me or place blame somewhere other than on me.  However, since I’m the friggin’ moron who staged the file, I had nothing to say for myself other than, “I screwed the pooch.  It’s totally my fault, I’m sorry and I’ll take my lumps.” Since facing a firing squad isn’t an option, and I don’t think the infraction is so bad that I’ll lose my job, whatever punishment awaits me can’t be anything so bad I won’t be able to live through it, learn from my mistake and move on.

However, between my fucking up and being told I fucked up, we had a company Town Hall meeting; and I stood up and voiced my concerns about there having been so many new hires in the departments that bring work IN, while there were none in those that put work OUT.  Several people from the rank-and-file came by after the meeting and lauded me for having the guts to stand up and say something that desperately needed to be said.  However, I don’t think the higher-ups appreciated either the comments I made, the question I posed or the way any of it came out.  I probably should just have sat in my seat and cried (which was the only other option - and unacceptable - and therefore the reason I chose to speak out instead).  I can only hope that the consequences for my grievous error in judgment in staging a broken file aren’t ratcheted up as result of my voicing my opinion in a public forum.  Especially a forum that’s mostly meant as a pep rally, despite management’s encouragement to send in suggestions or bring up issues that need addressing.  They ask for it, but they really don’t want to hear it.  Dem’s da breaks in Corporate America.

Morale is at an all-time low, and no matter how hard I try to just do as much work as I can and not let getting behind upset me, the fact is that it DOES.  It doesn’t matter that there’s more work to be done than one person can possibly do; if that work has been tasked to me, I do my damnedest to do it right and do it quickly, and hopefully at the end of each day there’s nothing left undone.  When that’s not the case, I take it as a personal failure and beat myself up over not being up to the challenge.  Due to a large project that required reassigning two people from my group (of THREE) that usually help out, my workload has increased significantly and is now to the point that I simply cannot finish everything unless I stay late every night - which I’m not willing to do.  A night or two here and there is one thing, but I refuse to fall into the mindset that I live to work.  I don’t.  I work to LIVE, and as much as I’d like to leave every night with a cleared plate, I’m not going to sacrifice time with my family to achieve that goal.  Unfortunately, my resolve to have a life outside work doesn’t overcome my sense of failure when I don’t reach the unrealistic goals I’ve set for myself.

The flogging will continue until morale improves!

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

It’s been lovely but I have to scream now!

I actually cried a few times at work today.  Tears of frustration, of rage, of being totally fucking overwhelmed by multiple instances of work left undone and therefore personal failures.  I beat myself up when I fail; it’s a bad habit, and one I hope one day to break completely.

I’m filling in for someone on vacation, and had a site update to do that I’ve never seen before in my life, and worse yet, involves some tricky Flash crap that means fuck-all to a hack like me.  Fortunately, the poor guru I begged for help after a few hours of struggling on my own took pity on my ignorant ass and not only fixed the problems but educated me a bit in the process.  Kritzia you’re my hero!

So that took up nearly my whole day, which put me much farther behind in another humongous project I stayed late to at least finish enough to satisfy my own sense of obligation… as well as destroying any chance of my catching up the logging of all my project hours for May, which the Suits and beancounters appear to feel we should prioritize above the actual work we’re expected to diligently document—or so it seems to a hack in the trenches like me.

At least I have the comfort of knowing that I have expressed all along my concerns about my ability, even my qualifications, to handle some of the work I’m asked to do.  I sincerely try my damnedest to do anything they throw my way… but there are limitations to how much I can fake or just wing.  I’m not a Flash designer, I’m not a Software Engineer, or Analyst, or whatever-the-hell I’m called this year. I’m not even a friggin’ college graduate.  I’m a scrappy bitch of above average intelligence who can do damned near anything given enough training.  At the moment, however, I’ve been assigned to have my fingers in so many projects with varying degrees of complexity that I’m spread so thin I’m starting tear in a few places.

To be fair, I’m not the only person in my department (or my company) to be stretched to the max.  Nearly everyone who’s spending their days glued to their workstation bringing the clients’ visions to life is showing signs of the strain… though I notice the people who are promising the clients the moon with a fence around it, disregarding entirely the inavailability of resources to fulfill such a promise, are leaving promptly at 6 PM… and smiling!  Damn them to hell.

And where the heck are Hub and the Princess?

Friday, May 17, 2002

A Plethora of Pink Slips

Y’know I work with some really great people… which is the reason I don’t mind having to put clothes on and go in every day!  Today there were fewer of them there, because layoffs are a reality for those living a corporate life.  While I’ll miss my friends (especially my former cube-buddy), I know they’ve been given an opportunity for change… and that’s always a good thing.  To their credit, the company does provide extensive placement help to those who get laid off.  Some folks out there in the dot-com world have no such luxuries; they’re lucky if they get their last paycheck.  Scary.

My job changed quite a bit, and I’m really excited because I’ll get to learn all sorts of new geeky things.  I’m also a little nervous because I want to do a good job, even though I barely have a toe in the water about digitizing media—my new path.  But I’ve always been one to come out on the better end of “sink or swim” when faced with the ultimatum, so I’m not all that worried about it.  My new cube-buddy and multimedia mentor is not only good at his job, he’s not the sort to be offended by my often rather inappropriate (in a corporate environment, anyway) sense of humor.  That makes this change a bit easier, for sure I tend to swear like a sailor when I fuck things up, and learning something new will, I’m quite certain, be frought with fuckups for a while.  At least I won’t have the stress of worrying that the first nasty thing out of my mouth will earn me a trip to HR, or (horror of horrors) to a Sensitivity seminar or some such.  LOL

Obnoxious Bitch.  Yep that’s a pretty fitting name for someone who can only go so far in being civilized.  I’ve never been anyone’s idea of a nice girl or a lady… because I’ve always spoken my mind, and often in the crudest of language (it’s often more effective in making a point).  But that’s what comes of living in the real world.  Everything’s not nice, or pretty, or couched in tender phrases.  Sometimes shit just is what it is, so why dance around the bald truth?

And there you have it.  The reason I’ve never held any illusions of climbing anyone’s corporate ladder.  Rush said it best:

Living in a fisheye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I can’t pretend a stranger is
A long-awaited friend