In Which Owl Busts Out

At work, I am generally known for being friendly, accommodating and upbeat. This is at a company which I, overall, find to be friendly and upbeat anyway, so this is a good reputation to have.

Having J has shortened my fuse. I give her nearly all the love and attention I have (hopefully giving my husband his due as well), and sometimes there's just not as much L & A going around as there was pre-zygote.

As a result of a miscommunication Tuesday and as a further result of inadvertently being taken advantage of by a well-meaning colleague, I temporarily lost my squash, as we used to say in college. I would go so far as to say that for roughly half an hour (though my outburst lasted closer to fifteen seconds), I was utterly squash-free.

The results of this were actually pretty positive. Because of the aforementioned rep as a squash-ful person, the fact that I freaked out caused others to:
- sit up
- take notice
- deal with the issue immediately

I have to admit, it also released some building-up work tension. I've felt awfully productive since that morning.

I'm not an overly emotionally expressive person. I should clarify. I'm not overly expressive when it comes to negative arenas -- I am, I think, good at positive emotion, and much better since I became a mother.

I am working on expressing myself more emotionally when the topic is a tough one. I know it's a problem. The struggle for me is that I haven't seen it help me understand things much more, make me or anyone else feel better about a situation, or help me communicate. I've also found, through the years, that people who say they want you to express your feelings are usually deluding themselves about what they want.

Admittedly, the workplace is not the place to hone those skills. But I probably need to cut myself some slack and be OK with showing myself to be, from time to time, a little rough around the edges.

And it certainly felt good. You never saw those co-workers' heads swivel around and back so damn fast. It's like they'd all rubbed WD-40 on their necks in preparation.