Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Nurturing What?

"Go talk to her now, Hope. You won't be able to sleep tonight unless you do."

I had just left the office for the day, put my backpack and purse down and decided to make a bathroom stop before I headed out for the hour long drive home. I had no desire to risk this. No siree. I'd already said goodbye to my boss and dearest one was waiting for me in the car. There is nothing so sweet as the thought of going home at the end of a work day.

As I prevented getting wet feet I thought about Step 10 - and how I needed to go back into the office and talk to my boss. I thought about dearest one waiting in the car, my boss wrapping up her own day, and how tired I was. In the end none of that mattered. I prayed for some humility and went to see her.

Earlier in the day I'd gone to her office where she was working on a powerpoint presentation. I didn't wait to see what she was doing, just saw my job title on the page and made an offhand, rather condescending remark, about how that really wasn't my job title as I really did this instead. There was just enough of an attitude behind my words that I realized soon after that my ego had just hit a home run. Ugh.

My boss is pretty easy going. Nothing much impresses her. She takes people at face value. After I told her I'd had an attitude about my job title she told me she didn't think I'd had an attitude, no worries. I told her that if it didn't show outwardly I had at least sensed it inwardly. What followed was a conversation about my job and how I really did do the other job. She figured she should submit a letter on my behalf so that my job title got changed because I'd get a nice pay raise if she did that. I smiled. It had nothing to do with actual job title or my paycheque, but with my attitude about it. I didn't try to make her understand anything at that point. I'd just fessed up to my arrogance and left it at that.

It's been a very busy few days. It will only get busier over the next few weeks. It might seem like a little thing to not have let that initial conversation go but to me it wasn't. If I can't fess up about those little things then you can bet your booties they will grow into bigger things that I could decide don't need any attention either. I would grow spiritually sick. There are many opportunities every day at work to cop an attitude and feed it. There are those who would help me nurture a bad attitude, too. I just don't want to go there. It doesn't lead to any good thing. AA has taught me that.

I wrote this all last night and left it for this morning to see if I still wanted to post it or hit the delete button.
So here you go.
I hope you have a great day.
I plan on it.

8 comments:

Wait. What? said...

I agree with you - get stuff out in the open early so they do not fester and become a bigger problem later on.

Lou said...

I can't believe how old I was before I realized that if I talked it out in the beginning it would not fester and grow.

Who knew??

Unknown said...

Hope this is so true, it's so easy to allow our egos to just slip and slide along, not really copping to anything, but you're right that does make us spritually sick and then we just continue the slippery slope...many hugs and so glad you posted this, a great reaminder.

One Prayer Girl said...

I'm glad you went ahead and posted this. What a great example of step 10 in action. And you are right, once you let something that is nagging at you slide, it just gets easier and opens the door to bigger landslides.

Bless you,
PG

Unknown said...

I'm glad you posted it, Hope -- keeping things inside can only habor resentment.

Good reminders here... :) Sue

annie said...

Yes, I'm glad you posted it too. What a great reminder.

Tall Kay said...

Not sure I would have fessed up to it being on the inside...hmmm. My ego can still be so damn stubborn. Point well taken.

It sounds like something good may have become of it too. Great 10th Step action. I love it when others show me how they do it. Thanks for posting this.

Daisy said...

Did you ever know that you're my hero........ :)

Mich