Trepidation
A lot of stuff is going through my mind right now.
It was a strange day. The weather, ironically, was analogous to my mood: It started off cloudy with a few spurts of rain, then the sun came out. Soon, clouds moved in once again, only to vanish nearly as quickly as they had returned. Then, this evening, it poured rain not once, but twice, with an overcast period in between. Mother nature must have felt like she was being catapulted from one extreme to the other.
That’s about how I felt today, too.
For a start, I don’t think I slept that well last night — it was a slow beginning to the day, and one mostly executed in a haze, as my eyes felt perpetually tired (complete with an annoying muscle spasm in the left lower eyelid, in fact, which probably made me look like one of those twitchy-eyed anime characters). In the early afternoon, before lunch, I had an acupuncture appointment to keep. Fortunately, the weather decided to brighten up just then, and I decided to take the GTO.
After an invigorating drive to the clinic, I received some good news: My blood pressure was back to normal. When I first started acupuncture, the doctor checked my blood pressure and found it a little high. In retrospect, I’m chalking it up to the tremendous stress I had been under for the entire week preceding that check. Things have been going a lot better since this past weekend, and I think I was able to cool off a bit. I even think the tip of my tongue is a little less red than it’s been, although the doctor didn’t seem to agree. (According to Chinese medicine theory, the color of one’s tongue is indicative of the level of “fire” in your heart. If the tip of your tongue is too red, you suffer from too much stress and worry. Mine’s been pretty red lately.)
I felt pretty energized by the time I got home — not sure whether it was the acupuncture, the GTO driving, or both. Apple had made a nice chicken fricassee for lunch, which I enjoyed with a side salad and some black olives. I thought things were going to get better from that point on. Unfortunately, they got worse.
In addition to having continual problems working efficiently, I was treated to some disturbing developments in other aspects of my life which contributed to a general undermining of my Great Faith in the Universe™. I’m not going to detail any of those developments here, but what really kicked me out of my comfort zone was that some of them forced me to take a look at the way I do business, and how the roles I’ve assumed at my place of employment are affecting my overall skill set.
There really is no better way to describe my business acumen than “Jack of All Trades, Master of None.” Throughout my career, I’ve always worked for relatively small software shops — with my current place of employment being the smallest one yet. Now don’t get me wrong; I like these close-knit companies where everybody knows each other on not just a professional level, but a fairly casual level as well. When he still lived in the local area, I used to hang out and play video games with my boss (sometimes, at his specific request, in lieu of actually doing any work!). The trade-off comes when you realize that you have to assume so many duties at the company — “wear so many hats” is another way of putting it — that you wind up spreading your skills thin across an increasing number of specialties.
