365 Day Journal Challenge

Day 8: My greatest frustration & how I handle it.

Yes you got it...What is your greatest frustration and how do you handle it?

I’m frustrated with frustration.  I’m frustrated by little pesky things that take up my time from my kids and writing, such as laundry, laundry, laundry, etc.  At work, its bureaucratic rules without reason and decisions made via policy that don’t serve the people they were written to serve. 

In myself, its that I want to fix everything at once, flaws in myself included.  When I work on them, others think I’m being too eager to do better and too honest that I don’t have it all figured out already.  When I don’t work on things, I look like I’m being careless or not paying attention to detail.  No one really knows how to fix themselves but boy do they have suggestions for everyone else. 

What really frustrates me is that I let myself get frustrated and then I feel responsible when I don’t feel like I measure up. To others, its already fine and I just want better – not things but I want to get to work on time and finish all the little piddly stuff at work that has to be turned in.  I don’t want to do those things at the expense of working well with my clients and I have a 3 yo with whom rushing to leave in the morning is not advantageous to getting him ready.  It makes me impatient and makes him obstinate.  Priorizing things also drives me crazy.  I want to use reason (what is most important according to my own system of morals) and sometimes it doesn’t matter how well you do something as long as it’s in by a certain day.

I think frustration is one of those states of mind similar to disillusionment – it doesn’t rank so high on the list of common emotions but tends to be the ignition switch that pushes us toward those emotions.  Why are we mad?  Because we are frustrated first and then can’t seem to do something right or get someone else to do something fast enough.  We feel pressure and we can’t control the situation.  Why are we sad? Because we don’t see things changing no matter how much we try.  We lose hope or don’t have faith in ourselves or others.  So much comes out of frustration and disillusionment.  Then you look at the emoticons or those magnets with 20 facial expressions and the emotions that go with them.  You don’t see these two, do you?  But you see sad and angry. 

It is important that we all understand not just how to identify our emotions but where they originate. What is the root reason?  That way, we can start treating the disease rather than just the symptom. 

In my business, you’d be amazed how many people hit their kids or spank too hard, or neglect them, perhaps for the first time, and the stressors they are experiencing.  If it’s between leaving your kid with a neighbor you don’t know that well or losing your job, which would you choose?  What about paying for groceries vs. paying for electricity, which would you choose?  The frustration some of these parents feel having to make decisions between two unacceptable options and choosing the least of two evils is tremendous.  We judge and we take kids from their parents, or custody is lost because of frustration over lack of support (child support or otherwise) or lack of childcare, when we would have no idea what we all would do if we were in the same place. 
Meanwhile, getting childcare assistance would rectify the whole situation so the parent could work and would be able to pay for food and electricity.  Or, getting child support enforced could also mean the difference b/w poorhouse and making it. 

But I digress here but these things frustrate me too.  How can gov say they won’t pay childcare but they want unemployment to go down.  Or, they don’t want to pay for early intervention and psychological services for children but they don’t mind forking over a huge fortune to run prisons (full of adults who didn’t get help as children).  We are going to pay, one way or another.  Why not on the front end with children and young parents? 

I’ll get off my soapbox now. So the second question is how do I handle it.  I write.  I try my best to get here before 8:15 at least and then try to look at what got me late and work on that.  I write more.  Then I try to be involved at work and get some things done before I peek at wdc.  I try to think of things due not just b/c they are due but because I respect the person they are due to and don’t want to put them out or inconvenience them by turning things in at the last minute.  In other words, I think of my loyalty to the worker and basic respect rather than the bureaucracy.  I have heard from soldiers that when they are in battle, it isn’t necessarily America they are fighting for but instead, their duty to their fellow soldiers to protect them and get them home, dead or alive but hopefully unharmed.  America may be why they joined but not the motivation while they fight. 
Well, same here.  If this paperwork is needed to get funding to help others, then that is why I should do it.  If our secretary, also a mom with a mary kay business to run too, says the end of the month is a nightmare b/c folks save visits til the end, that alone should motivate me to make her life easier. 

You see, whether it is just how I was made or ADHD or whatever, I have to find a reason within my heart, mind or soul and it may not be the reason I am given for doing certain things.  Once I think up a purpose or philosophy for doing something, I can motivate myself to do it. 

So the way to deal with frustration is to know myself as much as possible, the good and the flawed.  Then decide what is more important and work on those things first.  Decide why things need to be done and then do what I can.  Then at the end of the day, forgive myself (or try to) because I am human, a mere human, and if I had to trade one thing in me to get another (ie More organized), I don’t think I would do it.  So I have to live with the fact that I’m not perfect. 



50 Minutes 38 Seconds ago, in response to "Day 8: My greatest frustration & how I handle it."
twyls and twin: thankful  twyls





Here is a response to this entry.  I am putting it here so I can respond below it. 

You raise some interesting questions and bring up some valid points. I haven't made up my mind yet - does our government (and its people) choose to do nothing to help people meet their potential (only to pay for the end result) on purpose, or is it a true lack of foresight? My thinking on this can sometimes lean towards frustration - why don't they think? - and sometimes it leans towards conspiracy theories - do they even want the poor and downtrodden to get ahead?



Response:

I wish I knew.  I think we will a see a change when the good ole boy network of 60 ish year olds retire and some new folks get in the government.  I work with children and families and it seems that budgets run very short for the daycare programs and I see the direct impact.  Women who get jobs while living in public housing are punished by rent going up from the 30's to the 300's (for that, you could rent a house in our neck of the woods).  Their food stamps go way down, then cuts in daycare spending cause them to lose their daycare funding and poof, the woman cannot afford to work.  Now what kind of message is that.  Oh, and lets not forget, if she is "going with" a guy, she gets to keep all her assistance but if she gets pregnant and he marries her, poof, there goes all her funding.  Is that a message we want to teach?
The way this system is, a woman should be jobless and shackin' up undercover but how dare she work and get married.  That is so opposite of the message I would think we would want to send.  On top of all that, as if it could get worse, a woman who has worked for years and chooses to take a year off to get her RN license or further her education and asks for six months of food stamps so she could better herself is denied b/c getting a masters or graduate degree isn't the same level of necessity as getting a GED (which would allow her to continue receiving benefits).  How stupid is that? 

I wish someone way up at the top would use their noggin and make some sense.  But these funding issues are a result of bartering and negotiating, slipping in this and that to get some other this and that for another group.  They are so tangled in different budget packages that to untangle this one bill would make ten others fall apart and within those ten others may be a bill allowing money for special education services or some other needed resource.  You would throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.  My point here is that even those in high places who know this stuff makes no sense are dealing with an experienced set of legislators saying, "don't rock the boat on your first voyage;don't make this what everyone will think about you: if you shake this up, you will make enemies, etc, etc,"  Make sense b/c even the oldest legislators have to play politics to get elected.  My clients are not the most frequent voters.  Many have had felony charges for possession of marijuana ten years ago and can't vote at all.  Most don't have driver's licenses. Many live here and there and haven't registered to vote at their current locations.  Most just don't feel the government gives a $#!^. 

So, where do we go from here.  Great question.  What they need is some real live moms out there to write letters to their congressman and become squeeky wheels but then, often they don't get the grease, the get their necks chopped off.  Anyway, I think we just keep on talking about it, making others aware of how stupid our country is being to spend more money on jails than children.  Makes no sense but then again, the government also allows contracts to the lowest bidder.  Need I say more? 

I know I sound like I have a Conspiracy theory.  That really isn't what it is.  I just think that we, as a people, in an effort to be stable and predictable and to try to please the voters, have allowed social service bills to get so entangled within other bills that none of us really knows how to undo the damage, start anew, then create millions of new documents, policies, computer systems and then train all those state employees to implement the changes, something that costs and arm and a leg also.  It would be like tearing your house down to build another because someone was drunk when they wired your house and you have no idea how to fix one wiring pathway without screwing up ten more.  The government right now just doesn't feel it has the money to revamp the whole thing and its such a daunting task that it gets swept under the rug.  Bandaids are placed here and there but theres a hemhorrage under the sheet no one can fix.  So I feel for the lawmakers as much as I criticize them.  These entangled messes of finance and otherwise were done before most of them got there.  This won't be an easy fix. and short of having a national movement to make sense, (LoL) and teaching everyone to make policy based on a philosophy that rewards effort not laziness, and doesn't mind doing a pre-emptive strike vs patching things up on the backside.  We have the same problems in the healthcare industry and more folks take medicine and go to the doctor than the folks who are poor or need free daycare.  And the more money a family has, the more likely they vote and make noise to their representatives. 

Thanks for the note and the questions.  I hope this helps. 

SWPoet



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