It was the beginning of hay season on the farm, and my brain was taking the fun out of it. It’s been a rough week on it. Emotionally tasking. Weather wise, my first day in the fields was a good one but it just ended up being weird. I can’t explain it fully. I have never gotten over my tendency to crush the joy out of anything.
The following things were made worse by thinking instead of doing. I had two tasks of web work I had to postpone, and both were important image maintaining tasks. Putting them off was bad for business and not really hard tasks. I could have – should have done before leaving. Currently it’s the next day and I am writing this blog instead of doing those tasks knowing it keeps my mind uncomfortable.
I debated mentally whether I had taken my prescription meds in the morning. Once I got onto the field, I stressed and made the assumption I had not, so I started exhibiting symptoms of not having taken my meds. I was obsessing over everything and over thinking and my anxiety of masking to appear normal has me spending the whole morning feeling like I wanted to cry.
I stress that my duties were not hard, but my inexperience was bothering me because I didn’t feel like I fit in with the two old timer farmers and felt like my questions might be annoying. I project frustration into their brains when in reality I know they probably didn’t think twice about any of it.
I could have asked a hundred more questions but I held back. My golden rules to not interrupt inconvenience or annoy were on my mind. This means I ended up standing around waiting to be assigned something rather than knowing how to help. That’s a huge aspect of my life. My early memories of social work life were always of me never doing anything I wasn’t asked to do. That’s how you risk being yelled at.
If somebody tells me what, and often how to do a task, I do. If they don’t, I don’t risk initiative and frequently people who don’t know that about me will just consider I’m lazy because to them, there are obviously so many ways I could be helping. That’s a big one in my life. I have been fired at jobs for not making use of idle time.
So I stress over that because I just stand around the people working and remember being a kid and having to be assigned kid-like tasks like going to get a screw for them, or something else. I actually create extra work for people to think of what I should be doing and then I stress over the fact I won’t do it well anyway, or I’ll be shockingly slow in the eyes of the more experienced.
This day brought back all my feelings of inadequacy and life flashbacks. I remembered why I do often cheated with shortcuts and left early. I wore myself out. I was ready to quit by noon.
Then I had a whole new brain story of how I disappointed everyone involved and followed by the realization I have to don’t all over again today, and maybe worse. I refused to learn to drive a tractor and that’s the one thing that should be the perfect way to help out because it’s a clear task with no decisions.
Whoa is me, all in my head. The joy crusher. Missing out on quality male bonding and feeling like the 14 year old my dad would yell at because I obsessed so much I couldn’t even hold the flashlight steady.
It must be confusing to with ess from the two men I am the same age as. Our it isn’t even something they put any thought at all into. What a luxury iut must be to do things without the overhead of self esteem and anxiety and just being me.
It’s almost 6am. I better remember to take my meds and get those computer tasks done.
End of part 1. Day 1 report.
