Positive Head Space

 Well, it hasn't been six months since my last post, but I haven't really been consistent since my whining session, have I?

Things haven't really improved.  I'm sure everyone is aware of all the terrible things going on in the world, and I spent a great deal of time rehashing the terrible things going on in my life in the last post, so I won't go over it all again here.

I've been in my head a lot lately.  I'm still feeling burnt out, and I haven't really had a ton of energy to do a whole lot other than put in my time at work, then come home, do what chores are absolutely essential, play with the kids, and fall asleep.  I've spent a lot of time staring at a phone screen or a TV screen and zoning out, and, after a while, thoughts started accumulating.

This has been by no means a fun or easy process, and I've been trying to put things together coherently for a while now.  I finally decided to just start writing and hope that I can figure out the coherence thing as I go along.

I listen to a lot of podcasts.  I know I write about them a lot on here.  One of the things that bothers me so much is the talk on the news and current event podcasts about how divided everyone is right now.  It's all "polarization" this and "there hasn't been such division in the US since the Civil War" and all sorts of other stuff like that.  I find it difficult to reconcile because, well, I don't see it in the real world.  We're back to the post I made a few years ago about what's real.  I've been thinking for a long time that reality and "the news" are completely disconnected.

A few days ago I heard something on a podcast about how we're at a breaking point as a country and we need to find a way to come together and "heal our nation" before we descend into war.  But here's the thing: I think we already are.  I think we have been for a long time.  If we ignore the absurd edges of the political debate (which seem like the only portions of the political debate that get any air time), what I see in the real world are a bunch of people who generally get along pretty well.  Better yet, even when people have wildly different political views, I see them coming together in common causes to make their lives and the lives of people around them better.

Last April I wrote about spending more time trying to work on what things I have some amount of control or influence on, and I know I wasn't the only person thinking about that kind of shift in the last year.  I've seen numerous podcasts come out about that very idea, and plenty of articles online.  It's reached a saturation point, at least when it comes to the people in my life.  I don't hear people at work talking about national politics anymore, even though there's a midterm election in a couple of months.  I expected a lot more outrage on my Facebook about the supreme court decision on abortion; there was almost none.

What I see and hear instead of all that noise is people talking to and about each other.  People are going out again and doing things.  People are taking vacations, going to movies, and hanging with their friends and families.  I talk to my coworkers about their workloads and how we can help alleviate them when they get overwhelming, then we talk about vacations and kids and what we'll be grilling on the weekend.  I see people in my neighborhood out walking and talking about what's going on in each other's lives.  I see posts on Facebook about people in need, or lost dogs, or babies.  Lots of babies.

Maybe I'm overreaching.  Maybe I'm using anecdotal evidence to support a claim.  Either way, I think people, by and large, are good and want to be good.  Thus, instead of tuning in to the hatred and anger that the daily news puts out, they're tuning out and spending more time on the good they can achieve in their lives.  You know what, I hope I'm right.

I Have Been Avoiding This

 I've had the desire to write more lately.  I've written post after post in my head, but I have been blatantly avoiding logging on and actually putting the words out there.

I'm sure there's some deep psychological reason why, but I'm not a psychologist so I don't know why.  I just know that every time I think about doing it I end up not.  Even this morning when I turned on the computer to write here, the first thing I did was get on social media for half an hour to avoid it.

Maybe it's because I'm tired.  The baby (who has been born since the last post I made on here and is now coming up on six months old) has an irregular sleep schedule to say the least.  Some nights he makes it 7-9 hours.  Other nights, like last night, he wakes every 2-4.  That's tough for sure.  To make things worse, the toddler has been going through sleep regression as well.  The other night I awoke to him walking beside the foot of my bed with a blanket over my head after I heard the door bump the wall and I just about chucked a pillow at him before I realized it was him and not a monster or something.  Most of the time, though, he just whines from his room about how he wants more milk.

Maybe it's because I'm burnt out.  Work's been...well, tough lately to say the least.  Despite our supply chain team working as hard as we can to source and expedite parts, we've been dealing with a lot of shortages.  We've been able to get enough to meet our sales goals every month this year, but not enough to deal with the major backlog we grew in 2020 and 2021 because of staffing issues and other shortages.  Production has ramped up hiring and really worked on efficiency, so even though we're producing a lot when we have parts in stock, we're running out of parts more quickly than we had in the past, and there's been a lot of down time on the production lines.  It's tough and it's leading to a lot of animosity and stress in the facility.  Everyone is feeling the pressure and it's starting to hurt the way people interact with each other.  I've had to break up a couple of fights.  I had a woman scream at me for five minutes.  It's not been fun.

On top of the tension, I've been putting in way more hours than I'm used to.  I would previously come in to work 5-10 minutes before the shift started to get my computer booted up and get a coffee so I could be ready for the shift.  Now I'm coming in 15-20 minutes prior to shift so I can catch up on all the emails I refuse to check at home.  Every morning I'm coming in to 30-40 emails from people working on second shift or just from people who don't know when to stop working and think it's OK to send emails at 7, 8, 10 at night.  Plus now that I've got the "manager" title, more people think they need to copy me on emails that have literally nothing to do with me.  I probably delete or file without responding to about 50-60% of the emails I receive.  I proceed to spend 7-9 hours of every day in some kind of meeting.  I have to find time to still do some actual work.  I have 23 people that report to me so I have to spend time working with each of them.  Some days I don't get to see all of them and that feels wrong to me.  I leave an hour or more after the shift ends every day because that's when I've had enough time to catch up on the days' emails and get all my after shift reporting done, and also because very often there are meetings scheduled after the shift ends.  I barely have time to even eat lunch anymore.  Most of the time I eat at my desk.  Minimum I work a week is 48 hours, and man that sounds like an easy week.  Most weeks it's more like 55-60.

Between the lack of sleep and the extra work, I've been home less and irritable more, and it's put a strain on my marriage.  She's not working anymore, so she's in a difficult head space as well, and between my burn out and her, idk depression/anxiety, we're arguing a lot more.

The good news is, things are going wonderfully otherwise...right?  I mean, it's not like COVID is still a thing over two years later and also now there's a war in Ukraine.  Oh crap.  Well, at least there hasn't been 7-8% inflation every month since my son was born and my wife stopped working so the budget we made last year isn't completely useless.  Oops.  My employer said this inflationary period is going to be "transitory", so they're not going to make long term adjustments to their pay structure and the best I can hope for is a 3.5% raise.  Thanks employer.

So long story short, I'm busted right now and I don't know really what to do about it.  I'm sure plenty of other people are feeling this way, too.  I'm feeling pretty powerless and because of that I don't want to log onto my blog and talk about things anymore.  I'd rather just lurk on social media and look at memes.  My goal here today was to get this out of the way so that I can hopefully come back soon and write about something else.  Hopefully it's not six more months before I post again.