Ever had one of those days at the office where you think to yourself, “If I can just make it to the car, I’ll be fine.” Ugh. That was today. If I were Steven Spielberg I couldn’t have orchestrated it to go any worse. Actually, it’s been a rough couple of days.
I have one son, smart as a whip, who won’t do his homework and so he’s on the edge of not being passed to the 7th grade. His teachers arranged a time to speak with his father and I yesterday (we’re divorced) and I had scheduled 3:30 in the afternoon to speak with them. Not that it’s a good time to leave work these days as I have a mess of a project on my hands, but kids come first. I arrived at 3:25 only to find the teachers had somehow moved the meeting to 3:15pm. They’d managed to notify his father. And no one notified me. In fact, I arrived only in time to hear our son also had received detention that day for not having his planner signed three times the previous week. I was so tense that when I got home I threw on running shoes and went jogging – and I haven’t done that in years. I just had to blow off some steam.
Today, I had to cancel every meeting I could possible move – including a large customer – at the instruction of my boss in order to help get my floundering project back on track. Just a few weeks ago I was tasked with keeping the team motivated despite the fact that this project is falling into a deep, dark hole that’s sure to leave a stain on me. Today I’m criticized for being “too optimistic”. I’ve never heard that one before.
As the sole bread winner for a family of five, quitting isn’t an option but it sure dangled in my head today. In my head, I was chanting “just make it to the car, you’ll be in the car soon, you can escape soon”. And, as was inevitable – thanks to the fact that time marches on – I was soon in the car and feeling better already.
Not five minutes after settling at home, I’m zenning in Squidoo. Creating a lens feels like building a model ship. It’s all quiet and my face keeps creeping close to the screen as I fidget around with photos and HTML code. I feel the stress leaving my neck and shoulders and I’m lost in a little world sorting through images, trying out new colors, picking the paint for my “model”.
One of my latest lenses, Childrens Rocking Horse was a blast to create. While an affiliate lens, the rocking horses were so colorful and imaginative. Playing with the lens was like being a kid again, back home with my siblings, challenging each other to see how far we could go forwards or backwards on our rocking horse.
And all is right with the world again. (Let’s just not mention that I have to go back to that work project again in just a few hours.) 🙂