I’ve had a technical problem plaguing me at work for the past 3 weeks. While I’ve tried very hard to let it not affect me, it’s been hard running away from it. See the thing about me (and this is something I really should work on) is that when I have a problem that I don’t actually have the answer to, but am pretty confident that I can eventually find the solution to, I’ll keep quiet and wait it out. In most cases through life I’ve found that to be an adequate solution, unless I’m looking for confrontation. In a professional setting however that’s a bit of a no-no.

It’s one of those behavioral things I’ve noticed in the past couple of years about the way I do things. There’ll be a burst of energy at one point and things become clear and I’ll be able to tackle things head on, but until that time comes and the solution appears before my eyes, I decide to stay low, keep my head down and concentrate on other things.

So yesterday I sat down and tried to actually document what I had to accomplish. I used Outlook to write a list of tasks and then prioritized them (I’ve got a massive post about PIMs and To-do lists but I digress). The problem was put as a high priority and yet I still left it to be tackled as the last item of the high priority items.

Talking it over with a couple of people, I finally found a solution to my dilemma, that for some reason I just didn’t see for 3 weeks. Which leads to thinking, was it really 3 weeks worth of thinking, or was it that I wasn’t actually thinking about it, or was it divine inspiration? It definitely was a question of not seeing the trees from the forest and this has given me a massive sigh of relief and calmed me completely in other aspects of my life.

So this particular problem, which honestly has made me in many ways hate going into work, has been eating at me for 3 weeks. Although you’re not meant to bring work home with you, I unfortunately can’t do that completely. That’s part of the reason that I didn’t become a doctor, to my father’s dismay. I take my work very personally, very seriously. It’s a reflection on me. If you’re not going to do something correctly, don’t bother.

I don’t mean correctly in the eyes of everyone else, but at the very least in your eyes. I’m my own worst critic, and when I know something is wrong I can’t help but think about it. Being an anal perfectionist makes life hard sometimes.