time, layers, treading water

What the hell is it about this time of year? Why does it screw with me so bad? Am I suffering disappointment that the summer is over and I didn't do most of what I wanted to do? Am I just hitting the Seasonal Affective Disorder wall once again? Or maybe the layers of my life have just piled up in an inopportune pattern, and I'm feeling walled-in again. What does that mean? Let me give you an example:

So my son has been having some problems adjusting to kindergarten. I'm completely sympathetic, because he's dealing with a bunch of the same crap that I've had to deal with in my adult life, to my consternation. He's the new kid, because his class is full of kids who went through daycare and pre-K together, so he feels like an outsider. This makes him sensitive, irritable, and easily frustrated. He not only has to learn a new school and a new schedule, but he has to learn how to break into a tight-knit community that is not particularly welcoming. This is just like when I started managing this team. hard to get in, easy to feel shut out, incredibly frustrating and just..sad.

Anyway, so to help him out, my wife and I have been trying to regulate our behavior, trying to use a positive tone to manage the kids' behavior. This works great, and we've actually gotten results, but after doing exactly the same thing all day at work with supposed adults, it's freaking exhausting. I don't know how long I can keep it up. I mean I'm trying to force myself to completely change my outlook that I've carried around probably since I was in Kindergarten. I knew it would be hard, but why in the world would having an outward positive orientation cause my normal negative orientation to spike? Am I just doubling up on mood disruption because of the season? Because of work? What the hell?

Time has also become a problem. There just isn't enough of it. How did I do so much stuff this summer in any given day. I used to have time to work, then come home, eat dinner, and go for a walk or a bike ride. I used to hike on the weekends. Where did that time go? It seems like now, it's all I can do to sit down for 15 minutes when I get home before I'm off doing something else, cleaning or cooking, or driving kids around. Oh yeah, there's the difference: I'm cleaning. Over the summer, getting outside and moving was the priority. Housekeeping, not so much. I have got to get myself outside. Some corny thing I read earlier this year said that exercise doesn't take time, it makes time. I hate it when corny stuff ends up being true.

Finally, I've ended up treading water again. Or running in place. I'm having the same job-based identity crisis I've had multiple times per year for who knows how many years now. It goes like this: what am I doing in this place? oh yeah, they keep cutting me checks and asking me to solve problems, and I keep spending the money and solving their problems for them. Repeat ad nauseum, plus about 10 years. It's not that I don't accomplish anything. I've done some awesome stuff this year. I tied up loose ends with peer and employee relationships. I've gotten some people off their butts. I got myself off of my butt, and lost more than 60 pounds. I've proven myself to myself, but all on these small-potato accomplishments. I'm successful at a career I didn't want. I've made some progress in a couple of hobbies. I'm approaching a better-than-average degree of fitness (but look at the sad state of the average). I can still look at all that and say, "so what?" I have a thirst for Greatness, and it hasn't gone away. I don't think I want it to. I don't (can't won't) think that Records Management can be my ultimate destiny.

I keep thinking it's just some depression coming back, and then I realize that if it's coming back, it's because I haven't made any fundamental changes to the things that bother me about my life. I regilded the cage, is all, did some chin-ups in the doorway. the door's still closed, and I'm no closer to learning to fly. The answer to all this is the same as it was last year: it's on me to make a change, and it's going to be really difficult. "Not this" is not a sufficient career plan, and never has been. I absolutely must figure out what I want to be when I grow up, and become it. Transcend it. I've become all too familiar with the alternative.