Meltdown

I usually pride myself in maintaining some form of professional composure, but today all it took was one phone call to push me over the edge--or rather, send me running to the bathroom to cry.

I've been feeling overwhelmed the past week or so due to the upcoming conference on top of my normal workload. I had a lot of tasks (all high priority) that I resolved to get through today, and on top of that I was suddenly thrown the curveball of having a much higher call volume than normal due to a survey that was recently sent out. I am the contact person on the cover letter and it became crystal clear that many people received their surveys in the mail today. So for the whole day, while trying to finish things off, I was interrupted by phone calls on a subject I was quite unfamiliar with. One caller -- "the catalyst" as I'd now like to call him/her (I am trying to keep this as vague as possible) -- yelled at and belittled me, and I tried my best to be calm and comforting but was sworn at and then hung up on. This triggered the sudden urge to cry as I guess it reinforced how I felt I had been treated in a couple of situations lately -- that I was trying my absolute best and yet my efforts were unappreciated and unrecognized; that a sense of accomplishment kept eluding me since I would only be given more to do.

I tried to hide my tears from my coworkers but it proved impossible. I was embarrassed that I had let something get to me like this since I didn't take the caller's complaints personally at all. In my four years at this office, it was the first time I had shown such vulnerability. And I really wish it could have been otherwise.

I went for a walk shortly after being discovered and sat on a bench in an empty park, trying my best to distract myself or calm myself down. I started listing what I had to do today in the order that I should do them. Then I went back to work and by the end of the day I had checked everything off my list.

I feel like today has marked some kind of turning point in my work situation. I can't identify what sort of fire this spark will create, but I am aware that something is different now. I am starting to see things in a new perspective, blearily.