Stress is an interesting bird

I used to pride myself on not being a very stressed person. Oh sure, there'd be times when I'd get stressed, but by and large, I just didn't stress out that much. I happen to love my life and I'm 100% convinced I control the stress levels.

I know I'm a stress eater. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who isn't these days it seems. When stress comes knocking on my door, my first thought is, "What can I eat to make me feel better?" Big shock, but eating never alleviates the stress.

Yesterday I had one of the most stressful days at the killer new job.  It was two days before I leave on vacation. I had all my ducks in a nice, pretty row - behaving.  Then, as often happens, a risk you did not mitigate comes to life.  TWICE. Two different ducks. Who can plan for that?

The first duck misbehaving was relatively fixable. A sick voice talent means I had to adjust an already tight schedule even tighter...almost down to the hour. AND it meant that I'd be leaving something for the Queen (one of my new favorite colleagues at work) to do with my project. I was hoping I could leave without leaving much on my plate for others to do.

Anyhow, the Queen happily stepped up to take care of it for me next week.

Then the second duck, also a voice talent. Also a very tight schedule. Also gets sick. This particular duck is sensitive and demanding and is on a tight deadline. Because of unforeseen issues on their end the schedule got compacted drastically and another duck on the team leaving the team REALLY meant that this had to get done before that duck left. The voice talent getting sick rocked the project boat a lot. Her sickness coupled with the other duck leaving, me leaving, and then the voice talent having holiday in a week really caused an issue. And again, I'll be leaving something for another colleague to handle in my absence. Ugh.

Finally, an unhappy duck. Try as I might, sometimes you have unhappy ducks. Sometimes you can see it coming, and sometimes you can't. In this case I couldn't. The unhappy duck raised her unhappiness up the food chain and some executives got involved.  Thankfully, the best company in the world doesn't play the blame game, and is always more interested in making the duck happy first. Then figure out how to fix what might have went wrong in the process.

I was beside myself with worry yesterday. I just get full time and THIS happens. Ugh.

Again, thankfully, experience teaches me to not take it personally. I know I did my best. I know I'll learn something here. And I know the one's who are now responsible - namely the Queen - will make sure the duck is extremely happy. All will be good in the end.

All that combined with trying to get everything ready for the vacation - work related anyhow - caused some stress yesterday. I decided to try not to eat my way through it. So instead I stopped and bought some beer.  What? I only had one.

So this weekend, while trying to not worry about work, I need to hit the ground running. Barcelona / Cruise trip is just days away. Last year, when planning for Rome I wasn't working overly hard. This year is an entirely different beast. I feel like I'm behind and that just gets me more stressed.

On the bright side, in three sleeps I'll be on a plain with my SIL and we may or may not be drinking at 7am...but guaranteed we'll be having some drinks and tapas when in Spain...