Two words/phrases I hoped would never be assigned to me, and yet I've been displaying them more and more over the past few weeks.
I've been stressed out. It's been a different kind of stressed out than I've felt before. It's not the stress of finals, or the stress of the holidays, or the stress of a deadline, or the stress of major transition/change. It's been the stress of finishing my 4th step, the stress of unresolved conflicts, the stress of goodbyes, the stress of not trusting or respecting those in management at my job, and the stress of feeling myself "in suspense and incomplete."
This is what we talk about in program when we say we will still face every day challenges and the same triggers we've always faced, but now hopefully we have different tools for dealing with them. Some days I feel like I have those tools handy and readily accessible and easy to tap into and utilize. Some days, or some weeks even, I find them buried in the back of my mind under a huge pile of rubbish and crap. Do I still believe I'm okay, and that God has me taken care of? Yes, I do, which is why I'm able to keep coming back and keep working the steps and keep trying to better myself with and through this program. I do believe, somewhere inside me, that God has a plan and that I'm following the right path, bumps and bruises and all.
But I definitely feel in a state of fog at the moment, and a state of inner turmoil that is not a full-blown tornado but is a simmering pot that might (if not dealt with properly) blow too much steam and hurt someone. I have not been acting like my usual easygoing self at work. I have not felt happy at work, or comfortable at work, or enjoyed my job the same way, in probably four months. I did not realize how much Brittany, Reid, Jaimie, Eric, and Julian all leaving really affected me, as did the unresolved CRAP that happened with the boy. I really truly HATE the utter garbage I feel exists in that relationship. We talk a lot about keeping our side of the street clean and I do NOT feel like it is clean at all.
I also feel like my relationships with all of my current managers are also murky, because I don't trust them, don't respect them, feel like I'm micromanaging them, and feel like I'm not accepted as I am (but also because I'm not acting true to who I am). Somewhere in the past four months I've lost the ME I came to love being at Starbucks. The ability to focus on the customer right in front of me, the ability to show compassion and genuine interest and affection for my customers and my coworkers, the laidback FUN person that used to laugh and joke and chit-chat throughout a shift. We're supposed to be in a people business serving coffee. Yet I wonder if I have become too reliant on the relationships I built with coworkers and customers being what kept me going, made me happy, gave me joy in my job. Personal relationships and the individual customer experience are cornerstones to Starbucks' mission, vision, and business. Yet has embracing that attitude made me too dependent once again on others for my personal well-being and happiness? I also feel like the focus on the individual customer experience and partner camaraderie has been lost somewhat at our store... It's a combination of the atmosphere created by the management, my own desire to take care of my regular customers (in sometimes inappropriate ways because I barge into the conversation or interaction they're having with another barista), and the feeling that many of our partners DON'T like their job or working at our store. What do I do with this negativity and the ways it is affecting my job and my relationships within and outside the store?
I've always considered myself a pretty positive person, and even since being in AL-Anon I've felt the most myself when I'm optimistic and cheerful. But I don't feel that way much lately, not at work and not in general. So much of the work I've done in Al-Anon seems to be fruitless because I'm not sure how to clear away the crap I'm feeling (especially when I don't know I'm feeling it right away). I don't want to feel this way anymore, and I want to re-find the happy, positive, cheerful, friendly, team-oriented person I know I am.
This is a much more meandering blog post (more like a journal entry) than I've had in a while. I spent the evening with a coworker who's become a good friend, and I was able to see things in a different perspective. I wanted to write about it because sometimes it helps me gather my thoughts and articulate my feelings. If I write about again, it's obsession. Today, it's just a blog post.
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