Friday Hustle

A part of me regrets posting the Plath poem last night. Work has been a shitshow this week and yesterday was just — hay, ‘tang ina. The gist, I suppose, is I fucked up.

Or other people fucked up. But because my brain is wired a certain way, I have this crippling tendency to just take in all the blame.

This morning, for example, the contractor told my boss that our project had not been running smoothly in their site. Parts never arrive on time, he said, and it’s my job to tell the vendor to provide all the parts on time. But I always speak with the vendor and he always assures me that he’s got it, that he knows the drill. Welp. Apparently not.

The other day I had a different problem with another project. The site discovered existing issues with my design, all of which I assumed were already handled in the past. Again, apparently not.

So I made all these assumptions and they ended up biting me in the butt. I’ve been trying to justify my decisions but, to be honest, they were really just shitty decisions. I fucked up.

Today I tried to clean up the mess I made. I started reporting to my boss all the troubles I encountered for the day. He knows this shit better, and if any of the problems were significant enough to elevate to the higher-ups, I figured it’s best to use his judgment.

I also went to another site after my regular work hours to verify if the vendor had all the parts ready. Thank fuck they did. I then spoke with the team leader and he suggested some tweaks to my design. I took note of them, so hopefully everything would run better next week. I really hope everything runs better next week.

Thankfully nobody was mean to me this week. My superiors could have torn me to bits until all that was left was my incompetence, but they didn’t. My boss wasn’t mad but he did seem a little dismissive in the chats. I understand. He trusted me to lead a project but I couldn’t get it to run glitch-free. Trust me, Boss, I’m just as disappointed.

I did keep my cool the entire week, save for the internal emotional breakdown I had last night. I’d like to think I’m pretty good at handling stress. Usually I just take it all in and let it build up until I find some sort of release elsewhere. This week, for example, I went to the gym four days in a row. My limbs had been sore from all the exercise, but I like it this way. I’d rather sweat the stress than let the anxiety kill me while I stay still.

Tonight on the way home from the gym I drove to the liquor store to buy some beer. I haven’t had alcohol in almost a month (fucking nuts!!!) but tonight, pucha, I need a drink.

So this is how I’m ending the week. Maybe I’ll watch a movie, maybe I’ll read a book, or maybe I’ll just backread my favorite blogs while listening to Arashi’s greatest hits. The week is over and I survived. And to echo the wise words of my favorite philosophers, “buti na lang Sabado bukas.”

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The featured image is Maria Helena Vieira da Silva’s The Corridor.