Beyond Overwhelmed

Overwhelmed.

For most of my life I could not admit when I felt overwhelmed. It’s not that I didn’t feel it—I knew what it felt like, I just wasn’t allowed to tell anyone else. The worst person to tell would be my boss or supervisor. It would be admitting limitation, which is tantamount to admitting failure.

Not being able to recognize my limitations was part of what set me up for my poor choices in 2001. I was living like SuperWonderWoman…or trying to. I could tell I was failing and falling, but I kept moving faster and faster, hoping that somehow I would figure out a way to make things okay. Didn’t happen. Instead the world and life came to a grinding halt, a horrible crash.

I couldn’t…I wouldn’t go there again. There was and is no reason to. I have created a really good system. We have been extremely productive—when we have a full crew working. I’ve only had a full crew one day. I lost a really good worker last week. The 21yr old who gives me fits and ulcers is have her tonsils out tomorrow and is going to milk the recovery for two weeks. And my best worker, my right hand man, didn’t show up for work and Dan is going to fire him from the T-Net work program. I’m really sick about that one.

So this morning, knowing that I was going to be seriously short staffed, I looked out over the sea of orders waiting to be packaged and I felt severely overwhelmed. I could feel the tears knocking at the back of my eyes. I was swallowing down sobs. How was I going to get all these orders out?

Ed walked up. Ed is a great supervisor. I feel abundantly blessed to have Ed as my supervisor. He took one look at me and could tell I was distressed. He suggested we take a walk. I told him that I was feeling discouraged and overwhelmed. I offered to work extra, off the clock, but I still didn’t think we could catch up. I told him that I knew that the issue was that we were short 3-4 people and without them we wouldn’t be able to make the goal of 2000 parts a day, or 10, 000 a week.

We talked for a while. I felt a smidgen better. The crew worked hard today and got out over 1700 parts. Not bad for only 6 of them and one of me—and I’m getting called here and there all the time. I’m praying that Dan has a change of heart about letting the one guy come back. Tomorrow someone new starts. Tomorrow Beth (my 21yr old daughter who got fired from her job on Sunday) will be working with us.

So hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day. Today wasn’t too bad. I faced down an emotional demon. I admitted I’m human. It didn’t necessarily feel good, but it felt great. I mean realizing limitations isn’t a real high spot…old habits die hard. But die it did and it’s good to know I don’t have to go down that road again.

This may not make as much sense to anyone but me…and oddly enough, I’m really okay with that.