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| Print Journalism Blog 1: Stress and its Effect
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So, I'm sitting at work right now, and...godforbid, it looks like its going to be a long night. Especially for me. You see, I work for Dell French Tech. Which in and of itself, isn't that big a deal. Well, it is I guess. It's in French.
Most people who are going to be reading this are more than well aware that I speak French fluently. I swear almost exclusively in French when I'm at home or around peopel I don't want to offend. And, to be honest the language itself sounds great when speaking it.
But it's not my first language. Obviously, that would be English. And, when I'm talking to friends, or Quebecers that I encounter during my daily travels, I have no issue with speaking to them. But I get hell of intimidated when I walk into this building. And hell of stressed. Clearly, according to David Wallace, I'm not "unintimidatable".
This is, honestly, starting to have a detremental effect on my daily life. I find I don't sleep well, and this makes me crabby and quite a bit more ornery than I am generally. In essence, it increases my smart-ass levels by a factor of ten. But it's not just that, it's the effect its starting to have on my health.
The first problem I'm noticing is my lack of sleep. I can go to bed as early as I want and I fall asleep very quickly, but this isn't sleep. It's laying with my eyes closed for 8 hours. I don't feel rested when I wake up.
So, I take into account the number of factors than can affect my sleeping. Physical would be the first one. Is there noise? No. Is there a draft? No. Is there light? No, unless the TV is on.
So, once down. Number two is extremes in temerature. Is my room too hot? No. And if it is I open my window. I get a great breeze through there that cools my room down on even the hottest of July nights.
Is it too cold? No, not yet. And the blankets I use are built to keep my body heat in. If I have an issue like this, I switch to my sheets from my blankets, and this lets my body temperature drop back down.
So that makes two. This brings us to Psychological Factors, and Emotional Factors. These are the two I want to touch on.
Let be frank. I love my life. I have good and bad days, just like everyone else. And today was an excellent example of a good day. I woke up early (grumble) to drop my dad and sisters off at work and school respectively. Then I drove across the city to Shane's house.
Now, here's an issue. Has anyone tried to get Shane out of his house at 7:30 in the morning? Let me tell you, it's a friggin' chore. Even if its his idea to be out this early I still have to wait for 10 miniutes for him to drag his lazy ass down the stairs and out of the house.
We met up with Alyssa for breakfast (breaky, according to her) around 8. This was the most fun I've had in a long time. It's nice to have adult friends. Even if neither of them is over 20 years old yet. I went to school, had photo class. Good day, to be frank.
But then I get home. And I sit down at my PC, screw around on Warcraft for a bit, then hit my PS3 to watch the West Wing. And I slowly watch time eat its way through my afternoon towards 5pm when I'm due on the phones. (currently, it is 5:36). And the knot in my stomach grows larger, and more pronounced. Its hard for me to eat dinner as my stress piles on.
Now, one things most of you don't know is that I used to be on anti-depression medication for depression and OCD. I decieded that I didn't want to be relegated by these pills, and so sought council instead. But its nights like these I wish I still had those meds to even me out, ya know?
Anyways, now I'm in work, and it's not nearly as bad as my psyche makes it out to be. But it still affects my sleep. I go to bed every night saying "Man, I'm excited for such and such class tomorrow" but then I say "Damn, I still have to work." And reality comes in to make me drown like a bear attempting to swim in concrete, and being dragged to the stoney bottem of a river made entirely from molasses.
So, here I'll sit till 8pm, then I can go home and "sleep" only to start the whole rigamoroll tomorrow.
-Matthew
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Posted by mjwb on 2008-09-23 17:43:52 | Rating: | Views: 66
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Hobbits have two breakfasts.
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Posted by mikewk
on 2008-10-01 15:21:50
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Ah, yes. I remember that knot. Working at Stream seems to have that effect on people.
Working and going to school is never any fun. Juggling both is hard, but not impossible.
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Posted by Leannamc87
on 2008-10-02 18:24:08
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As someone who worked at a call center for almost 2 years (I still can't believe it was that long), I can appreciate where you're coming from. When it comes to call centers, it seems like there are basically two jobs you can get that are half decent. Option one: you can wind up as a trainer and teach a never-ending parade of new hires how to do the job. Option two: monitor the calls and do QA. The only problem is that the people who already have these jobs hang onto them like grim death.
I know this because by the time I left NCO (the call center where I worked), basically the only people who had been there longer than me on my contract were trainers or QA. And supervisors I guess, but I definitely didn't want to be one of them. Yeah, do nothing but talk to pissed off customers that are too angry or too stupid (or both) to do what the rep is telling them so they escalate? No thanks.
Fortunately for me, I am generally a stress-free person, so I never got too wound up about it or had trouble sleeping. Don't get me wrong, I still hated the job, but most days I found if I could get past the first couple of calls, I could get past the next hundred-and-however-many too. Of course, those first couple could be real killers. I still remember some of the worst calls I had. I wouldn't have thought they would stick with me after all this time, but somehow they do. On the flip side, I also remember the day I finally hung up that headset for the last time and turned in my ID card. At that point, I didn't have a clue what I was going to do in the future, but I was so happy that I really didn't care. Ah, that was a good day...
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Posted by mikejlake
on 2008-10-02 21:48:56
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