If this post were set to music, the composer would not be Wagner.

March 1st of this year was a momentous day in my career.

Not really, but it looks cool up there, doesn't it?

I don't know what I wrote about last year or whenever it happened, but at some point in the past couple of years, I went from being an organized and glorified secretary ("Administrative Assistant II"), a job I enjoyed but didn't challenge me very much, to handling one of the aspects (possibly the easiest) of an employee's time off work, FMLA. I work for a large department, though, so there a lot of parts to that, and policies and laws, and I had to learn a whole new set of skills, and I don't take to change easily, and I let things like this make me anxious and doubtful.

"Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!" -- That's a quote from "Lear," by Young Jean Lee, now playing at City Garage Theatre in Santa Monica. Using it here is an inside joke, between me, and myself.

Anyway, my point is, I was so upset when I had to change everything, and then I mastered it, and then I made it better, and then I was told that I have to become a full-on Return-to-Work Coordinator effective March 1, 2016, and take on even more responsibility, learn another whole new set of skills, and I am once again, freaking out.

I just explained it to a coworker (someone with whom I have a history of not always getting along with, but as I am discovering, she and I are so alike, as much as it used to bother me to admit): I got built up (I raised my hand to over our heads) and then now I have to start all over again, at the bottom (slammed my hand on the other one, at waist level). I'm so dramatic. But it's totally what it feels like.

It doesn't help that my office is chaotic, it doesn't help that you ask a question and you find out it's just the tip of the ice berg, it doesn't help that everything here is multi-layered and complicated, it doesn't help that my coworkers (and me, too, probably) tend to be a bit passionate and sometimes passive-aggressive.

It doesn't help that last month I hurt my shoulder and though it's not excruciating or stopping me from functioning, it hurts a lot and is constantly on my mind (and it affects my sleep). I'm being seen by a doctor, and tomorrow I have some physical therapy, but it hurts.

It doesn't help that something else, personally traumatic, is happening to me that I can't control. It won't kill me, but it does suck, rather a lot.

I'm sure that events will transpire as they usually do (history has shown!) in that I'll begin to understand, I won't be so anxious, and that I'll start to feel better (and that I will see that though I feel like I'm in the midst of a lot of drama, this is just how it is sometimes), but for now I'm sort of drowning.

Hugs welcome.