At work today I had this moment where I had to tell myself, “Shut up, Dave.”
It’s a somewhat cyclical thing with me. Work begins taxing me more and more and I have these little Popeye moments where I say to myself, “That’s all I can stands and I can’t stands no more!” I start daydreaming about vacation, start thinking towards the weekend, developing a case “senioritis,” as they used to call it in those final months of high school. If I let my thoughts linger there for too long, my productivity is impacted. I get in some kind of work-depression funk where I start questioning the meaning of it all. That, my friends, is when I have to give myself a figurative slap across the figurative cheek and tell myself to snap out of it.
My job is awesome; my life is awesome; my family is awesome; buck-up and be thankful. I told someone today that the first problem on my brain when I wake up each morning is which car my wife is going to want me to drive to work, the big one or the little one. Some guy in India wakes up in a hovel and the first thing he worries about is feeding his kids for the day. Perspective.
Also at work today, and not related, I wondered to myself why my team can be so cynical all the time. I thought about it and realized, I’m a cynical person. Someone challenged me on this once, saying that if you studied the behaviors you most dislike in your team (as a manager), you’d find that most of them are modeled after the very same behavior exhibited by you. Ouch. A damning concept, but one that I think is probably true – at least in the case of my team’s cynicism. I’m a pretty cynical and sarcastic person, or at least I like to entertain all reactions to things, a primary one being cynicism. So, your team is cynical and you’re likely a cynic yourself. How to fix it? How to change the collective thread of behavior? Model it. You change, they change. A tough, but thrilling, concept. Sigh…
Yeah, time to get some perspective. Goodnight.
Also written on this day...
- canadian love affair - 2010
- video makes up for word - 2007
- masturbate and head out for dinner - 2006
- the first rule of boondoggle club - 2005
- sweep it under the rug - 2004
I wonder if that theory tests true in the classroom too?
I wouldn’t doubt it. I guess I can take encouragement from the notion that I at least know how to go about “solving” any problems. Trouble is, it’s probably a bit harder to change your own ingrained behavior than it is to exact change from a team or class of students.
Bummer.
Trying to convince yourself, Dave?
Dunno if you mean about my team’s me-sourced cynicism or that I really do under-appreciate work, but “yeah, maybe” to both.