The Bucket Theory

It seems a Tuesday ago I wasn't wanting to go to MOB/Lifesling practice. I went. It was cancelled. No wind. Went to Target, nearby, instead. :-)

This Tuesday was an even worse day at work. It made last Tuesday look like a walk in the park. I'm not one to throw things, cry, or throw absolute temper tantrums. At close of business that day, as I walked back to my cube, I seriously did a Nolan Ryan wind-up and launched my mechanical pencil into my cube wall (it didn't even make a sound, unfortunately), wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, bat my head against a real wall, throw more things, cry noisily, and stamp my feet. It didn't even seem like the problem was work-related issues, so much as absolute personality issues. (That's really polite, what I felt like at the time is that they were personality defects. But I'm not normal either, so who am I to judge.)

You can spend all day, every day, trying to manage a project, or a process. There are various leadership styles. I tend to think that when you're dealing with a bunch of engineers, it seems like the best bet is to try to understand the way a person works, what they need, want, worry about, wish for, understand, fear, etc... and use that understanding to help folks work together. But whatever my particular brand of leadership is, I was apparently not a Leader, but a Dart Board, on Tuesday.

It was such a filthy, foul day that day that I didn't feel like boating. Or learning something. Or... doing anything but laying on the couch. I ended up taking a shower... some type of ritual to cleanse myself of the Odiousness that was my day. But in my head, I still didn't want to go. In my heart, it was probably the healthiest thing for me.

I got in the car and headed back into town proper to go to MOB practice. And got there in a stupendously fast time--it's a drive that can take me from 40 minutes (late evenings, weekends) to 100 minutes. And when I got out, and it was cool, with a cooling breeze, and there were boats, and life was good. Not insane. And then nice people showed up, and life was even better.

MOB practice: AWESOME. Captain R was great. It deserves a whole separate write-up.

After MOB practice, I walked out with a friend, L, to the parking lot. I was describing my day, how I'd taken a shower to try and wash it off, but even then didn't feel like coming. She explained a theory her father had told her, called the Bucket Theory.

You take a bucket of water, and you splash it around wildly with your hand, churning that water up into utter chaos. You wait 5 minutes, and it's absolutely still. The lesson is, all of your wild thrashing doesn't matter, it's just a waste of energy, so learn to let things go.

Today had some crappy moments again at work again (though not nearly as bad as Tuesday's)... I walked away from it for a few minutes at one point, out to the big dock. And looked at the millions of little capillary waves on the river, and how in the grand scheme of things, their combined behavior really didn't budge the barge docked there one bit.

I'm going to use that Bucket Theory more.