Happy Fun Cog

The scenario started as so many do, with your narrator consuming an excess amount of caffeine. Namely, a large iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts in the morning, and two 20-oz bottles of Diet Coke in the afternoon.

Towards the end of the day, I was cc'd on an email at work in which my boss named me the contact for helping a tech from another group set up their server on a Citrix farm that our group 'owns.' The technical aspect of it isn't really important; the point is that I was named as a contact point for a process that I didn't understand but was, in fact, responsible for.

I spent 30-45 minutes going through documentation, trying to find an answer. I had been the backup tech when we set up our Citrix farm, so I had some exposure to the software, but I had no idea about what the next step was. This was made worse when the requestor called me and told me he needed it by Thursday. I came very close to losing my temper with him. Mostly, I was mad at myself. I felt panicked because I didn't know what to do.

I fired off an email to the consultant that we worked with while setting up the Citrix farm, but continued to stew in my own juices, brimming with rage at everyone, especially myself. I couldn't think straight. Why couldn't I find the information in the documentation?

I felt stupid and incompetent. Between the stress and the caffeine I'd ingested earlier, my jaw muscles were clenching repeatedly, almost spasming.

All I wanted to do was head back home to my apartment and crawl into bed, so sick was I with disgust and anger for myself.

But I forced myself to go to tae kwon do, where I had a good sweat. Nothing brings your mind back to the present like struggling to breathe.

When I got back home, I looked at my Blackberry and the consultant has responded to my email. I had, in fact, been in the right all along. The information that I needed had, in fact, never been documented. There was never a process in place. There was no way that I could've known what to do. I had, in fact, done the correct thing - tell the person requesting assistance that I had to look up the information, then contact the consultant.

I feel like I've made a lot of progress in analysis, but I still have this habit of defaulting to anger and self-loathing when in doubt. I just need to learn how to have faith in myself and, above all else, chill the fuck out.