For various reasons, over the past month my life has been composed primarily of dizzying heights of absolute bliss and depressingly abysmal lows. I haven't laughed so much or enjoyed life so much in any of my recollectable history but conversely, I don't remember having been so randomly worried, depressed or pissed off either. Overall it has been a great few weeks but I tend to think I'm handling it the wrong way; I'm mixing the black bits of life with the white bits and getting gray rather than keeping them separate and enjoying them in their purer forms.
For example, today I went out with some co-workers who are, as has been mentioned, very pleasant and at least similarly-minded people. For some reason I can't fully explain though, something in the course of the day pitched me into the very depths of fury. I had a name for the target of my rage but it wasn't exactly justified or completely comprehensible, even to me. Yet as ineffable as it was, this blackness consumed what was otherwise a perfectly pleasant situation. I'm still a little surprised that we went to lunch without the actual guest of honor (ok, not surprised, horrified) but be that as it may it was no reason to let unrelated fury consume me so. It wasn't constructive; nothing was gained whatsoever. Yet consume, it did and everyone felt it.
Then just as I was about to come down from that stratospheric fit of annoyance I arrived home to find a message on my home answering machine from my boss's boss. It seems that while I was meeting with the rest of the department one of my customers called my boss's boss's boss to complain that I hadn't resolved the issues they had reported just a mere three hours ago while I was in a meeting. Further, they complained that they hadn't heard from me all day. This was especially surprising since we had one phone conversation and exchanged six emails in the morning before the meeting but be that as it may, this was officially an emergency of the highest caliber. The appropriate response is, of course, to panic so I spent the next four hours snapping people's heads off, being a general asshole and trying to sort out problems while all the interested parties had long ago gone home for the weekend and stopped worrying about whatever was so important before. This bit of black ink in my life consumed the entirety of a Friday night.
If it were just me wrapped up in this, that would be fine. I can suffer alone. But it's not just me, there are other people involved in every step of this, some of whom I love and care deeply for. From my puzzled lunch mates to my family they all suffered in some way whether they just took the time to inquire after my mental state and offer words of encouragement or made me dinner. I feel bad that my ink splattered on their lives; people have enough ink of their own to deal with.
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