On Having Answers

This morning, I was wandering around a different college campus on my way to a meeting. I was a bit grumpy because it was early, I hadn't finished my coffee, and I'm still not fully back to healthy from getting smacked around by a migraine a few days ago. I thought about excusing myself from the meeting, but it only happens every five weeks or so and I'd missed the last one for being sick. So. I was walking around and people kept asking me for directions because I look like a school official and should know where things are. I do know, just for another college campus.

I did my best at directing folks to the library and sorting out which light-rail they wanted and thought about it all on my trip back to my campus. And I realized that all day, every day, no matter where I'm at, strangers and people who know me expect me to have answers. Answers about directions, where to order copy room paper, where to go for lunch, where the singers' handbook is, where that orange thing came from, where the concert is being held, which bus is the quickest to get to the zoo, who did I think I was, and onward. Since I usually do have answers, it's been o.k. for however many, many years I've been the answer-person. But right now I'm worn out and over-burdened. I know it goes with the territory of being a responsible adult, but I think I need the rest of the world to be good, self-managing detectives for a while and figure things out on their own.

I'm good at being organized and figuring out efficient ways to handle what-nots, but I'm bad at relaxing, bad at not taking on too much, and bad at making sure I have free-time. I'll be devoting the next however many months to working on my badnesses and letting others have a chance to have answers for a while. And if the copy room runs out of paper, so it goes. Folks have figured out who really handles the school's office supplies for a good hundred years before I got here, so it won't have long-lasting catastrophic consequences. Although it would actually be pretty funny if it did. My office has pretty good seats to epic copy-room meltdowns, so if there is a copy paper crisis, I'll get to see it first-hand.

Anyway, all this is in response to an epic lunchtime stress-induced meltdown I had today. I am only one, wee, little sea otter and I don't have all the answers. If I did, I'd really be running the world. And if I did that, you'd see a lot more purple poodles in the world. And a lot more tiny ponies. The end.

An Erinku (in stressiness):
All my emails
have pages
of needed replies
they will wait