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in hard times, is certainly one of the gifts of being a part of a recovery community. when i need support, emotionally or spiritually, i can get it when one of my peers is going through an experience that is part of my recovery journey, i have the ability to provide them the support they may need. i am unsure of how much more i can share on the topic of empathy, other than i lacked any when i got clean and my empathetic ability has grown over the course of living a program of active recovery in my daily life. what i do know for a fact is that when i feel empathy, pity and sympathy are usually not present. perhaps it is as one of my sponsees believes that sympathy and pity are replaced by empathy as i grow and are opposite ends of the emotional “scale.”
one of the things i am beginning to notice at work, is that many of those who use our tool, expect us to raise their requests for features and enhancements. the message i get from that behavior is that their time is somehow more important than mine. i am getting better at pushing back and the last request that came via WebEx will be ignored, as i have more than enough of my own work to do, even if they justify if by saying “nothing elaborate.” i “get” what they are trying to do, as i have fallen into that very same trap, reaching out instead of raising a ticket, to get a result faster than putting it into a queue. today, i can allow them the pleasure of jumping through the hoops and taking care of bidness. i have seen this behavior in big corporations before and it is always because i believed i had some sort of “special” relationship with the team in question and was entitled to make request outside of the normal process. it was a behavior i saw modeled by my mentors and supervisors and one that i took to with gusto. now i know how it feels on the other side and have empathy for the teams i interact with, when i need something from them.
anyhow, it is time to get out of the house and into this fine spring morning for another day doing the next right thing for myself, staying fit. it is another walking only day and i am not sure how far i intend on walking, as that is always a mystery until i make those first three turns. i do not need to complain about being out of shape or too heavy today, because if i were, i would have no one else to blame, just for today.

∞ DT ∞