I’m not REALLY dead

All appearances to the contrary aside, I haven’t died. Yet. But I have started getting pretty worked up about things that ordinarily I would just shrug about, so it is actually possible that the End Times are upon us and we should all either repent, or go out and get really drunk.

Or possibly, if there’s time, we could do both. But not in that order. Because then, we’d probably have to repeat the repenting step and, well, there’s almost definitely not enough time for that.

I am now officially in the “fish or cut bait” trap. And I think everybody is irritated with me for not doing the OTHER thing more diligently / better / whatever. And I…am becoming…ahem…slightly short tempered…about it.

I’d love to make everybody happy. But…I can’t. I just can’t. There are not enough hours in the day or enough days between Now and Then for me to do that. A lot of these conversations should have started taking place in January, to be brutally honest about it. But of course, they didn’t, because back then the fact that I was ‘rolling off’ at the end of March wasn’t “in your face” news.

Everybody, including myself by the way, would rumble and sputter about it from time to time. Oh ya-ya-ya, uh-huh, we need to start thinking VERY SERIOUSLY INDEED about that…!

…and then we would be “absolutely hammered” by this-n-that-n-the-other (unlike every other business day, of course) and “swamped” and “overwhelmed” so that we then neglected to “action” the “learnings” enough to “reach out” to “anybody” “about” “anything” “really” “wait” “what’s” “with” “all” “the” “quotes?!”

Help, I have fallen into too many business meetings, I can’t action my learnings of English anymore…! (<= alas, this is almost like a ‘real’ sort of sentence that could be used in some of these meetings…and yes, sometimes, I want to reach across the table and slap somebody for saying they want to ‘action’ a ‘learning’ when what they mean is, ‘do it more betterer, like we should-oughta have done it from the git-go.’ I MEAN, REALLY, PEOPLE…let’s use proper American grammar, IF you please!) (this digression is otherwise entitled, How Tama amuses herself in meetings so that she is not paying a LICK of attention to whatever-all is being said, and is thus later surprised to learn that she was supposed to action something but didn’t even hear that learning because she was too busy coming up alternative phrases for ‘action the learnings.’)

Heh. Corporate America, baby. Gotta love her!

ACTUALLY, you know what’s weird? The other day I was stomping around the house in a bit of a temper because blah blah blah and they were all yak yak yak and I was all LOOK, IT’S SIMPLE, IT’S JUST blah blah blah and they were all {blank stare} and then…

…wait…

And I looked at my tech-husband, who was sitting there waiting for me to shut up listening intently to my every faaaascinating word, and I said…

“…ohmygah…”

He started chuckling.

“Shut up,” I snapped at him.

He started laughing.

“DUDE, SERIOUSLY, this is not funny…”

He proceeded on to howling and slapping his knee.

“ARGH!!!!!!!!”

I very much fear…I have migrated over the line. I can no longer seem to find that middle ground, where I can give Business the information they need without making their heads explode, and translate for Tech what on earth that weirdo was on about, with his ‘actioning’ and ‘learnings’ and ‘reaching out.’ He isn’t going to, like, HUG me or anything, right…? No, dude, don’t be scared…he’s just a project manager, they talk like that…

Instead I’m stuck in this place where my high level stuff is too high level, so they’re demanding more detail. But then my detail is too detailed and they’re just…looking at me…like, I don’t get it. Or worse, they want to argue with me about all these nitty-gritty details, like arguing is going to, um, solve something.

Bonus points if their “simple” solution to a perceived problem or omission would involve umpity-majillion man-hours to implement. Work to be done by…{glances around at empty floor}…hmmmm…

And then? I get frustrated with them. Which has got to be the number one symptom of having gone a step too far.

LOOK. We both know you can’t understand this. How about if you stick with actioning the learnings in meetings, and I’ll just get my MacGyver on over here, hmmmm…? (<= yet another symptom of having crossed over: arrogance, tinged with smugness)

Of course, it’s also a symptom of just being tired. I’ve been go-go-go for five weeks straight. I have gotten very little sleep since mid-February because I have had so many things dumped on me as non-optional.

I have been working my arse off.

And then, it has suddenly been discovered – and this may come as a great surprise – that I’m leaving, in, like a couple weeks.

I KNOW. It’s not like this was, you know, on the calendar for months or anything…{eye-roll}

Soooooo, suddenly I’m just incredibly popular. I’ve got tech howling for me to finish…well, almost every open QC item. I’ve got business whining about not understanding how they are going to action the learnings and that they need more documentation and so forth and so on. I’ve got partners desperately trying to get one last mystery solved. I’ve got users asking if I can pretty please figure out just one real quick issue they’ve got. I’ve got QA hounding me to analyze their test plans, to confirm that they’re doing the right testing.

Which is one of those “Tama can’t win this one” propositions, really. If I meddle, I will end up having to write all the tests. If I don’t meddle, we will probably end up with “eh” testing because the poor tester has no idea what he’s doing – he’s new to the application, too, and it’s always been a black box for everybody.

@^*&@.

Well – life in the fast lane, huh?

And only a little over two weeks left to go before the next rest stop…Lord, but am I ready for it…