Your report is the crap that crap craps!

Yesterday I was having a pretty good day at work. It was a nice Tuesday following two, almost three straight weeks of having to work overtime every night, so at the end of the day it was really nice to get to leave on time. I was leaving work feeling great because I had the next day (today) off, so I was free. Free! Until I got a phone call from my boss at around 5:00 telling me that I had gotten my days wrong and I don't actually have the day off until March 31st.

Normally this would really suck, and it did, but normally it also wouldn't matter and I'd suck it up and just take my day off when it was actually assigned. This was not a normal circumstance though. I have my paper due this weekend, and I so very desperately needed today off so I could work on it. So I asked if I could have Thursday off instead, because then at least I would still have one solid day off this week in which to work on my paper. That was also a no-go.

At this point in the conversation, everything seemed to hit me at once. I really don't ask a lot of my workplace when it comes to days off. In fact, in the year and a half I've worked there, I haven't taken one day off, except for the day I had a dentist appointment to remove a couple wisdom teeth (and I came in to work the next day, miserable sore swollen face and all), and once I left after an hour of coming in to work because I was sick, so it really didn't seem like too much to ask to have this day off, especially when it's typically our slowest work day of the week. And so when I was told that I wasn't able to have this day off, I'm ashamed to admit that I burst in to tears and couldn't keep it together. I actually begged my boss to give me the day off. Yup. I felt exactly like how Marshall Eriksen felt in HIMYM when his boss yells at him about the ninja report, even though my boss was not yelling and was and is actually quite nice. She then said that she would get in touch with the other managers and get back to me.

I spent the rest of the evening feeling sorry for myself and being miserable, which is very embarrassing. Being around Chris helped a lot though, because he's willing to do almost anything to make me laugh, including eating about a quarter of a purple onion (which he would've done had I not practically pried it from his fingers). Wackiness is appreciated. Around 9:00 that night I got a call from her stating that, after discussion, I was able to have the day off. The immediate sense of relief was also immediately overtaken by guilt and...shame? Is shame the right word? It'll do.

I remained feeling weepy for the remainder of the evening, and I found myself asking why. I got exactly what I needed, so why did I still feel like this? I then found my thoughts wandering and they stopped on something I remembered Paul Antrobus saying in class: what you see depends on what you're looking for. So I asked myself again, why did I feel this way?

I think I was mostly mad that the situation itself actually occurred, and these emotions were just residual after-feelings of what I felt to be a completely unfair circumstance. So even after I got the day off (even if I do still feel a little guilty about it), I was still angry that it happened in the first place. So after I managed to see it like that, I was able to let it go.

Thank you day off, you make everything better.