Diary #13: Life in the Balance

Today I was told by my manager that another designer wanted to handle some of my work. I felt confused and concerned and said to him that I wasn't sure where that was coming from. We had had a conversation about checking in with each other, or so I thought, but nothing about sharing work. So I asked the other designer about it, and he said he had offered to help streamline some of my work. I feel annoyed by this and confused. And scared of holding work back. I had the thought, I don't want to be accused of holding back work, or even accurately identified as being fearful of having work taken away from me. I had feelings of being trapped and scared. I told him to give me a minute to think about it. I wasn't able to look at the work in its entirety because I dont' have access to the admin page yet. I sat down and asked myself, where is there complexity i'm unsure of so far, and I idnetified this one page that had more questions. And I told him he could go ahead since ...

This happens to me fairly often. My first thought was...god damn this podcast distracted me! I felt angry and I had the thought of putting the blame on the pod cast or my friend who shared it with me. Then I felt guilty. I had the thought, what a terrible friend I'd be. But I still had the feelings of anger burning in me. It's the calendar app, I thought. It's terribly designed. WHY do peopel use this?? I began to feel heat in my face and I started tinkering in the preferences. I fantasized about yelling to my teammates that if they were going to make me use this application I could not be held accountable for responding due to it's poor design. I also thought about what the heck I should say to my teammates. My first thoguht was to apologize and explain myself. But I also thought jumpign in with an apology may not be the best way to start. I heard myself and though, these thoughts are probably not reasonable and maybe it's good to test the neutralizing exercise wit...