Have you ever stopped to think about the decisions you’ve made each day and pondered what the outcome would have been had you made a different choice? The reason I ask is because I’ve been doing this a lot lately; I have been analyzing my decisions to the nth degree to see why my twisted mind works the way it does. This is how I deal with my anxiety disorder. I find psychiatrists useless except for dispensing the appropriate drugs. Through the cough-cough years that I’ve suffered this affliction, I’m convinced the only person who can snap me out of it is me. How narcissistic.

My job, just so you know, is fraught with peril. If I do my job poorly, people suffer. If I do my job well, people suffer. No matter which way I look at things, someone suffers because I am the way I am. Lest you think I’m feeling mightily superior, it’s not a trait exclusive to me. You do it, too, though you may not sit and ponder it to the same extent. Imagine watching hardened business executives’ faces when you walk into a room and announce, “this isn’t going to be pretty, gentlemen,” and you hand them pieces of paper that say, “you’re goobers.”

I had to do a financial projection on a particuarly attractive promotion that several of us have been mulling over for several months. The core team has secured funding and given the green light for further negotiation but it’s my duty to make sure we are on task and within the prescribed budget. The negotiations are rough — I don’t have to speak with the attorneys on this one (the attorneys are grateful) but I do have one-third veto power within the core team. So I did my job. The report was spectacular and vividly detailed — not bad for a chick who failed math in high school.

So now the core team is at odds over the project — can I massage a figure here, fiddle with a number there, project slightly above our expectations and “be more realistic” about certain expected revenues. Numbers games. I hate numbers games. The truth is the truth and if they don’t like what they see, they should hire someone who will give them what they want, not what they need.

I often think that people call my work into question because they don’t like me. See how this ties into my anxiety disorder? I agonize over my work because I want it to be right — but the moment it’s perfect I then concern myself with how others will perceive me because of my work. When I had presented the projection I sat back and watched one core member throw up his hands. The other one is still reeling from shock. I took both reactions as personal slights and spent most of last night unable to sleep because of them. I guess I lack the mechanism that switches “that which I do” from “that which I am.” My work is mine; it is a part of me and therefore inseperable.

So as I tossed and turned I wondered what would have happened had I turned in a fluffier financial in the first place — I knew I could do this, no one questions my expertise — would I still have tossed and turned because I did not do things the right way? Just what is the right way? Doing it the way it should be done, or doing it the way those who pay me perceive it should be done?

After two hours of wrestling with my psyche over this single facet of my alarmingly hectic day, I came to the conclusion that I was right to stick to the truth because dreamers need some grounding in reality. If I present them with the facts and they are still willing to be dweebs then it’s really out of my hands (though not out of my job description, since I have to babysit said dweebishness to its bitter end). I don’t think I would lose less sleep by doing things any other way.

It still sucks, though. I now have to go in and massage, fiddle, project and otherwise fluff the truth out so it is more palatable to people intent on investing in a lie. It’s my job to do that, you see.