It’s not worth it.

You might remember this post from last April.  My job, while secure and rewarding, can be very stressful.  I have to meet large deadlines and small deadlines and for me, February 5 is one of the 3 huge grant deadlines for clinical research.  One of the hidden components to my job is learning to work with people of all backgrounds, egos, and levels of expertise, and then taking that and learning how to tolerate each other.  For this particular grant I’m working on, this has been a particular challenge.  I think…well, I know that pregnancy makes me more assertive, moody, and to-the-point.  And in some cases, I’ve come to believe you have to be assertive to get what you need because at the end of the day, it’s your performance that you have to protect.  For months, I’ve dealt with people who are either not delivering what they should or not meeting my internal deadlines, and for me that is stressful, especially considering these are people of power.  Way more power than I have.  But what they fail to remember is that if they don’t get me what I need, it doesn’t go.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what I’ve said this week.  Ultimately, it’s not worth my stress or loss of sleep to make up for poor decisions team members make.  The only thing that I suffer from is having to clean up the mess at the last minute, which believe me I’m dealing with now. 

Last night I was up at midnight and never went back to sleep.  Why?  Stress.  Work stress, which is pathetic to me.  But this is what we do.  We work hard, we stress, we get grants and proposals out.  And at the end of the day, it’s another clinical research proposal that will hopefully solve a health problem in the world. 

But I still wish that people would do what they are supposed to do, and then take responsibility rather than placing blame on others.    But this isn’t specific to my work.  It  happens all the time in every day life.  So, I’m going to breathe and realize

IT’S NOT WORTH IT

Cause it’s really not.  And the stress isn’t good for me anyway.  So, I’m going to take my own advice and calm down and do all that I can do.  As long as I know I’m doing my best and my managers know (which they do), then it’s out of my control.

So, here’s to hoping for sleep tonight.  And here’s to hoping my promotion goes through in March :)