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Wellness Wednesday for November 8, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Well, TIFU.

Today I managed to achieve the incredible feat of making it to work over two hours late. I was so smashed that I slept for 11 hours, through an alarm, and made it to work at 11:35 AM. Was expecting to be raked over the coals once I got there and apologised, but instead my superior repeatedly told me it was alright and that she was just worried if something had happened to me.

While I am usually a very reliable worker and often work close to 50 hour weeks (for a job that pays far lower than the median Australian salary), I don't feel good about it. At all. I stayed three hours after close of business just to try and make up for it and got off work at 8pm, something I was told I didn't have to do but did anyway. I feel especially bad because my superiors are genuinely nice to me and even though the job is tiring, requires a lot of task juggling, and doesn't pay very much at all, that's not their fault and I would really like to not disappoint them.

Interesting, this has never happened to me.

You understand this is going on your permanent record, right?

You understand this is going on your permanent record, right?

As I said, I'm not ecstatic about it. It's probably one of the biggest marks against myself I've earned while I've been there, and while it didn't affect any deadlines or critical tasks (I was able to finish all my work) it probably does have an impact on perceptions of reliability.

At the risk of sounding self-aggrandising, though, I will say I'm not too concerned about people's perceptions of me in the long run since I am aware people are generally happy with my performance. In the org I work at, there's a monthly meeting where you can nominate someone who's performed particularly well, and last month I received three separate nominations. I am told regularly that people have good things to say about me, and often have to be pushed by my superiors into going home. The reason why I was "smashed" enough to sleep 11 hours was not because of any particularly indulgent behaviour, it's because I have consistently tired myself out for the past month or so.

The main practical concern I have at this point is more that this could happen again and I want to incorporate protections against that into my routine. But if three alarms isn't enough to make me get up and stay up, it's hard to imagine something that will.