Thanksgiving Eve

A bad work day today.  It shouldn’t be like that.  It’s the day before Thanksgiving – and traditionally this is a slow day and you’re allowed to leave early or log-off early.  We normally get an email from upper management telling us as such, and it was noticeable that we didn’t get one until much later in the day – I suspect sent out somewhat reluctantly.  But did I have an afternoon meeting scheduled?  Of course I did.  And was the meeting cancelled?  Of course it wasn’t.  And was the meeting a nightmare?  Of course it was.  I know I’m not the best communicator – but when you’re dealing with other people who are also not good communicators, but on top of that whose first language is not English… well it’s a recipe for disaster.  When someone is reviewing something I’ve done, there’s only so many times that I can say I don’t understand what you’re saying or please explain what exactly needs to be changed.  It’s unbelievable.  And the thing that they are talking about is the same thing that I changed in the first place because they asked me to do so.  It was driving me insane.  There were numerous times that I had to mute my microphone during the zoom call so that I can scream out in frustration.  The ironic thing is that it wasn’t even a Chinese I was dealing with, it was a Russian.  My god, they might even be worse than the Chinese.  And the sad thing is that I actually like this person – just working with her can be really tough.  And this meeting was really just the topping on a crappy day.  Too much work, too much incompetence to deal with, too much stress, and too little thanks for all our hard work at this time of Thanksgiving.  I can feel my blood pressure elevated, I’m suffering from some really poor quality sleep recently, I’m getting into bad eating and bad lack of exercise habits, and I don't feel good about myself right now.  I was planning to go for a walk at lunchtime but I couldn’t get out thanks to being so busy.  Hopefully I can do so over the next days – despite the rain in the forecast.  I have got plenty of work I need to do that I could easily keep myself busy over this Thanksgiving break – but I’m not going to, I need the break.  And then I have, what, 9 days of probably very intense work before coming back to the UK.  On top of all the million other things I need to do before I fly back.  Fun times.