The Storm before the Calm
One of the hardest things for me about returning to the working world has been that slow but inevitable reversion to my former self. It starts quietly - some frustration in traffic, a little annoyance with a coworker - and ends with me shouting obscenities at a computerized voice on the telephone. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Before Peace Corps I had a habit of, shall we say, "sweating the small stuff". Major life-altering issues I could handle, but throw one old lady with coupons in front of me at the grocery store, and suddenly my life was unbearable. It amazes me that I can have the forbearance required for 18 years of schooling, and still lose patience with the absent-minded driver in front of me.
Before Peace Corps, I'm not even sure I knew all of this about myself. I spent years being blissfully unaware of my anger. But in Kenya, there was a lot more time to be reflective. Plus, there's just no place in Kenyan society for being uptight. Every time I would express my frustration with a late meeting or lose patience with a Kenyan tout, I would immediately feel bad. It was their culture I was entering, and in any case, how does getting angry solve the problem? I learned a lot from my time there, and I came back feeling like a more centered, self-aware person.
I remember just a few months ago visiting my mom in Roanoke. We were driving somewhere, and someone cut her off or stopped short or something. She furrowed her brows, used some mild expletive like "Jerk-o", and looked to me to share her righteous indignation. Instead, I referred to the teaching of the Buddha and said, "Just give him a silent blessing and move on."
Then I started working again. Three times a week, I make the 50-mile trip to Northern Virginia and back again. I do everything I can to ease the pain of my commute - new music, NPR, This American Life. I leave late in the morning and come home late at night to avoid the heaviest traffic times. So how is it that last Monday at 8:30 in the morning before even getting to the Interstate, I was flicking someone off in traffic? Who does that?
More often than not, my anger is directed toward things I can't control, usually in the form of an inanimate object. The internet has gotten its fair share of verbal abuse from me. Since I've been living in Fredericksburg, we've had continual problems with the connection. When I started working from home, this became intolerable.
A few weeks ago, we finally called Cox Communications - the irony of their name does not escape me. With computerized telephone systems, it's nearly impossible to speak to a real human anymore. Instead, I spent 20 minutes on the line with "the troubleshooting lady", a voice that walks you through checking all your connections before passing you to someone in tech support. When I finally did get someone on the line, he concluded that we needed a new router. Gilbert went out an bought one that night. No change.
Two weeks later, I lost my connection completely during the work day and had to go to the library. We called Cox again, spent 20 minutes with the troubleshooting lady before being handed off to a person, and this time they said it was the cable modem. Jen bought a new one that day. No change.
I'm giving all this background in hopes that in the reader's mind, it will mitigate my behavior yesterday. It was another work at home day, and the internet went down again. I called Cox, prepared for the rigmarole of the computerized system. I thought perhaps I could shorten my wait time by lying to the lady. "Now, reboot your computer," she'd say. "This may take a few minutes. I'll wait. When you're finished, say continue." I would say it right away, and she would counter with, "Are you sure that your computer has completely finished rebooting?"
It still took 15 minutes to go through the menus. Some of this, admittedly was my fault. The process is slowed down considerably when you shout into the phone, "Just let me talk to somebody, dammit!"
"I'm sorry," she'd say. "I didn't understand your request. Please speak slowly and use just a few words." Then she would repeat all my options again.
When she asked me if my connection was working yet, I lied again and said, "No." The way I saw it, it didn't matter if my connection was up for the moment, if I could expect it to be down again an hour later.
That's when it happened. Instead of passing me off to a tech person, she looped back to troubleshoot my problem AGAIN. So I lost it. I screamed every curse word I could think of into the phone, hung up, cried for a minute, then called again. This time, I said nothing. Instead, I continually pressed "0". And miracle of miracles - it worked. I got a real live human voice. Things really started moving then. A mere 40 minutes and a phone call to India later, and the internet hasn't gone down since.
In the evening when work was finished, I went for a run through some of the most historic streets in downtown Fredericksburg. It was a gorgeous night, not too hot, not too cold. Afterward, I walked to the yoga studio and took an hour-long class. All of my tension melted away. I came back to the house feeling as happy as a clam, completely centered. It's a wonderful feeling, one I want to keep.
It felt so good, that I woke up this morning and popped an episode of Inhale into the DVD player to do yoga again. Or tried to anyway. The DVD was damaged. Dammit! Can't anything go right for me?!
posted by Amy @ 7:38 PM
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