It’s been a fantastic week.
No, really.
It had everything:
– Drama…
– Texas food (they’ve figured out how to deep fry deep-fried)…
– A team meeting…
– An outing to an Indian grocery store with Sharjeel…
– Major doubts about everything…
– Carl…
– Richard…
– Drug withdrawals…
Quite the recipe for excitement.
I began the week thinking that my team had pretty much gone nuts. We’re just now seeing the end of a several month long reorganization that has us seated with a new VP, a new General Manager, a bunch of other new people, a bunch of people lost (including this wonderful man (I’m seriously going to miss this guy)), and everything feeling the wrong kind of Different.
In retrospect, I’m not sure if my decision to use this week to quit taking benzodiazepines was a good one (benzos are the anti-anxiety drugs I’ve been taking for months on end). When I finally hit a point where I didn’t feel comfortable waking up without popping some Ativan (it’s like Xanax and Valium), I realized that I should probably quit. Talked it over with my doctor and was told that it would probably be really unpleasant and that I might have a seizure or two.
“No big deal, “ I thought. “I’ll just use this week to go to the team meeting and quit the anxiety pills at the same time. Super efficient. That’s me - Mr. Super-Efficiency.”
I also thought that quitting around my team would be a good idea. If I were to have a seizure, then somebody would probably notice all my jiggling and call the people that you call when you want someone to stop jiggling and they’ve repeatedly ignored your requests to “Stop jiggling, please.”
By mid-day Tuesday, I was in a cold sweat, sick to my stomach, dizzy, grumpy, angry, confused, frustrated, grumpy, grumpy, and angry. It didn’t help that our team meetings consist of ten hour stints of twenty people in little tiny rooms arguing about everything under the sun with every single argument eventually becoming a pissing contest about who knows more about System.Some.Obscure.Namespace.
I usually do reasonably well during these things because I shut off during the parts that seem irrelevant and wake up when I feel like I can either learn something from, or contribute something to, the situation. This time, I lost that filter.
Wednesday was much of the same, but the discomfort was lessened in the evening when, while at a team function, I was notified that I had won our team’s “GQ” award for being such a sexy tart. During the ceremony, I was offered a rhinestone-encrusted paper crown, stapled to fit my head and my head alone. I refused to wear it, though, simply because it was exactly the sort of thing that, once worn, will instantly disqualify you from winning any future “GQ” awards. I hope that nobody was offended.
Later that night, while still basking in the glow of a worthwhile contest won, Sharjeel invited me out to visit an Indian grocery store and then have some Indian food. I was down with that. I didn’t know much about Sharjeel until Monday, and he’s proved to be one of the more entertaining and interesting people I’ve met in a while.
The store was fascinating. It was a huge collection of weird pickled somethings, strange animal body parts, sixty-seven different kinds of yogurt, and many mysterious things that I couldn’t pronounce (much less spell). I told Sharjeel that I wanted to try some Indian candy, and he and his friend offered to buy me some. By “offered,” I mean that I asked them for money, and they gave it to me. Thirty seconds and $1.09 later, I had a little plastic box of some kind of preserved tamarind. The ingredients were tamarind, sugar, chili, and salt. They began sweet, but, to quote Ralph from The Simpsons (and note that quoting The Simpsons is something I rarely do since I hate it when people quote The Simpsons), they ended up tasting “like burning.” I can highly recommend the experience (if you actually do try these, then could you please check the color of your bowel movements four hours after one of the candies, paying special attention to any changes in consistency and coloration, and get back to me? title all relevant emails “My poop changed after I ate foreign candy” so that I can set up an Outlook filter – I’m just curious if anybody else has any particularly exciting encounters with the toilet following the consumption of one of these suckers). We ended the night sampling some food, followed by mango ice-cream that was served in, yes, flower pots.
Thursday came and went. I don’t remember much of it except that I couldn’t tell if I was sweating because of the withdrawals or because of my culinary experiences from the night before. I wouldn’t even know that Thursday had happened if it hadn’t been for the sudden arrival of Friday.
Friday saw the relief that I had been waiting for all week. I finally felt in my element, and management came out to pretty much say everything that I wanted to hear. While I realize that I can be a real sucker for the Positive Management Rally that usually ends these meetings, I have to say that it was a fabulous way to part with the team. It was nice to feel Good about Things rather than whatever the opposite of Good is.
Then came Friday night.
But Friday night deserves its own post, and the eerily lifelike voice synthesizer in the airport just announced that my flight is about to begin boarding.
Seriously, I feel good.
I’ll write more later.
Love,
Rory.