ABL #9: The work is working ✨

But my internet service is a different story

(Image source)

For two weeks now I’ve been having technical difficulties at work, the kind that not only prevents me from doing my job but that also takes a laundry list of troubleshooting measures to still not resolve while adding fifty new errands and tasks to my list.

It’s been a hell of a time for separating my productivity and worth. By April Fool’s Monday — my third shift of the audio dropping out of all my calls, customers shouting “Hello? Hello?!” while I repeat, “Hello, I can hear you, can you hear me?” on loop — I was struggling to regulate my emotions.

We’re talking immediate feelings of despair the second something went wrong, frantically over-explaining to my supervisors, and tears welling when I got a different IT tech from the one who’d troubleshoot with me all week and had to bring him up to speed.

But then it happened: The work started working!

I don’t mean the web phone application or internet service. I mean allllllllll the burnout recovery and stress management and therapy work clicked into gear and started working.

First I let myself cry without feeling bad about it. Between chats from IT and repeated internet speed tests, I gave myself about 10-15 minutes to just let my body do what it wanted to do. I reminded myself that crying is a natural and necessary release — especially for me, a frequent crier — and that it’s a reliable way to “complete the cycle,” as Amelia and

Emily Nagoski

write about in Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. I let that energy move through my body instead of trying to hold back the tears and stuff it down. Then I blew my nose and replied that yes, I had already tried suggestions A thru Q, and no, none of it worked.

Then I tried to name my emotions, and by that I mean that I asked myself aloud, “Okay why am I so upset right now?” Two emotions floated up.

Disappointment, because this shift was not turning out how I wanted; because after a week of thwarted shifts, I was looking forward to working again. Frustration because the problems were so mystifying and persistent and beyond my control.

And just below them a filthy sediment of fear: I could lose my job over this. It’s happened before.

I know that fear. It’s leftover professional trauma from that time I got fired for taking a sick day. I’m oversimplifying, of course; I actually got fired for burning out. But the connection persists and now I’m afraid on some level that any day I’m unable to do my job could very well be followed by an unceremonious firing the next shift.

So I reminded myself of the facts, trying to logic myself out of waiting for the proverbial other shoe to fall. This company is not that company; they’ve been kind and understanding every time I’ve come to them with an issue or needed a sick/mental health day. I was invited back for this season; now my stats are significantly above average¹ and trending upward. I’m documenting these issues and updating supervisors and doing everything I’m supposed to do. Why do I still feel like it’s not enough?

Because I should have already purchased an ethernet cable and a new headset over the weekend when I had my modem replaced. I should have prepared appropriately so that we could test everything at once. I should having already done literally everything, the most I possibly could, instead of taking things only one step at a time.

Which is, of course, such a silly and ridiculous expectation!!!

I was of course crying again by this point², so I started speaking aloud to calm myself down, self-soothing until it turned into an affirmation:

You’re allowed to feel disappointed. You’re not allowed to feel responsible.

Fear not, gentle reader: I still over-apologized to my supervisors for their own decision to end my shift early. Recognizing it’s not your fault doesn’t make the feelings of guilt evaporate.

But then I texted both my husband and my best friend about it. I co-regulated by snuggling my cat Pollyanna at length. I journaled about it in depth. I decided to see the unexpected free time as a gift to use on my own projects. And within a couple of hours, I felt calm and not under threat.

And when when these issues popped up again Friday, and then again today, I came back to that affirmation, stayed calm, and started the whole troubleshooting process over again.

OK, Doomer

For the past two weeks as I’ve had these tech issues, I’ve reflexively blamed the stars and planets. Then I’ve immediately remembered Amanda Montell’s new book and her chapter on confirmation bias, our tendency to favor info that supports our existing beliefs over that which refutes them.

But look:

My tech issues at work all started the day after the March 25 eclipse, during the “shadow period” onramp to our current Mercury retrograde, which officially started the day the above story took place. Mercury is the planet of communication, learning, thinking, and disseminating. And my Chani horoscope last week noted that as an Aquarius Rising, I could be especially affected by this retrograde and eclipse, both of which would highlight systems that aren’t working or where something’s gone wrong.

One of my supervisors also blamed my interrupted connection on the cosmos, although for reasons more astronomical than astrological. Do you know about sun spots, solar storms, and their impact on the earth’s electromagnetic fields and thus our communication technologies? I did not, and honestly still don’t, and I don’t want to spread misinformation, so I’ll just say this: There was a geomagnetic storm the day before these tech issues all started at work.

Then Friday morning as I sat in my corner reading chair, it started … shaking? rumbling?? floating??? It felt like one of the cats using it as a scratch post from below, or someone trying to lift or scoot the chair with me still in it. Or exactly how every person who has ever experienced an earthquake describes one.

“You’re going to think I’ve gone crazy,” I told Josh, who was in the shower when it hit and didn’t feel it, “but I swear I just felt my first earthquake.” Then I tried to convince myself that the strongest New Jersey earthquake in more than 240 years was just an extra-blustery gust of wind hitting the house because as an ex-Californian, earthquakes plus east coast does not compute.

While I don’t actually think the universe is conspiring against me, I am fighting the urge to comment something flippantly fatalistic about the whole, entire state of things — “the world is literally tearing itself apart,” “does the universe want me to fail?!” etc. — because that would be leaning into declinism, another cognitive bias that Amanda Montell discusses in The Age Of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality (out Tuesday/ Preorder now). Speaking of …

Reading

• Is “Doomslang” Making Us All Numb? —

  Amanda Montell
  ’s piece for Esquire on the rise of dystopian jargon and why ultimately it’s both an angsty gag and not a gag at all. Based on the chapter from TAOMO about declinism.

• No F*cks Given® with Sarah Knight
  ’s handy flowchart for help deciding if something is really worth your energy (I’m counting this as therapy homework).

  Should You Give That Fuck?

• Rebecca Armstrong
  ’s musings on weepy artworks and the all-terrain sort of tears to which I can deeply relate.

  On being a frequent crier

Writing:

• Soooooo many support chat messages.

• Questions for my interview with Amanda Montell next month! I’m asking her all about the cognitive biases at play in self-talk and affirmations, among other topics. I’m also taking suggestions from readers. Have one you’d like me to consider? Submit your questions here.

• My annual 75% of a poem because it is NaPoWriMo but I’m out of practice. If you aspire to write more poetry than that this month, my bestie

  Hattie Jean Hayes
  has a trove of poetry prompts that I think you’ll like.

• At my first official writer’s retreat, Writing In the Pines, next weekend. I’m doing

  Nancy Reddy
  ’s workshop on “Crafting Vulnerability in Creative Nonfiction,” but the other workshops all look so good that it was a tough choice between them.

Coming up!

• For paid subscribers this week, my Reading Notes for The Age of Magical Overthinking.

Crossing my fingers that some combination of tomorrow’s eclipse and Tuesday’s Xfinity visit will set things straight.

Talk soon,

💜 Chloe

1. A fact which itself triggers a whole different tailspin of cognitive dissonance and imposter syndrome.

2. Let’s not forget that Scorpios are water signs, too, and therefore frequent criers.