All week long, I had been stressed.
The kind of stress that I had told Jaireh earlier that was not good. The good stress = motivation, empowerment, excitement. The kind of thing that some people would call a thrill. The goal is clear and you climb up and the awards are evident and so so satisfying.
Then the bad stress. Everything seems like it won’t end. It’ll keep going, eating the soul from the inside of you until you have nothing to give. The kind of thing that makes you want to repel, but there’s something keeping you back. The kind of stress that makes you hopeless, depressed, and every negative emotion out there.
Last week due to the concept test and sudden design demands, I was feeling horribly inadequate. First I wasn’t thrilled about the project. Yes, I did think that it was below me. But it was also the idea of it. I didn’t think that it helped people. i didn’t think that it nudged behavior in any way. I didn’t want to do this screen design.
And so my style of doing drafty things didn’t quite work with others.
First with Amanda, all the demands to prepare the prototype just so. All the flows, all the questions (which actually was the easiest part), all of it. Then the demands from aron. The requests. Things that I had already articulated that I didn’t like. I didn’t want to play and said so.
But no matter, I couldn’t do a single thing.
So in that one on one on Friday afternoon. I had prepared a whole argument. And so it went through until I had this feeling of “I wasn’t good enough”. it’s the kind of feeling that makes me want to flee. I have had this feeling many times before. A feeling that I wanted to quit. A feeling that I wasted all this time, money on the masters, degree…on doing this work. When? I didn’t enjoy it.
Then I would be okay if I was just an advisor. Someone who influenced others, but didn’t do the work.
It became a discussion about how he and I were so far apart.
And of course, that’s where I tearfully collapsed. I didn’t mean to, of course. But once I started, I couldn’t stop. I was upset. I was quietly not happy.
What I want to say is that I don’t apologize for expressing myself. Because unlike the earlier feedback about being emotional, I vehemently disagree. I apologize for not saying something earlier.