Do you have a lot of stress in your life?  Having a career in IT, sometimes stress is just unavoidable.  Even though computers can cause a crazy amount of stupid stress, I’ve learned to not let it get to me on most days.  There are only so many things we can be in control of, and there is no need to stress about the things we can’t control.

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On Tuesday this week, I thought my heart was going to explode.  No, not in the happy way, but in the “I am soooooooo freaking stressed!!” way!   Three situations in particular had me at my wits end.

  1. A server crashed.  Luckily we had a backup and could get everyone working just fine until the server is rebuilt, I knew the rebuild is going to involve a lot of work from me, and brushing off some skills that I haven’t used in a while.  Not to mention finding software, hardware, and just coming up with a plan.
  2. I had to work late due to the server crash.  That’s cutting into my time which was going to be reserved for other things I had to do this week.
  3. Another work situation that I’m not even going to discuss, but it was more of an HR issue and not IT.  REALLY stressed me out.

This is something no one wants to see.  Ever.

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Poor, sad server.

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I felt my blood pressure going through the roof just thinking about all of these issues – and then thinking about all of my upcoming obligations with neighborhood commitments (in charge of the annual garage sale!), the race (Glass City marathon work!), and family (vacation!!!).  Quite honestly, I was just a cranky bitch at the end of the day. That was obvious.

It was one of those days that I would have gone to the gym on my lunch hour, and threatened to my coworkers that I might not come back.  But oh yeah, I don’t have a gym membership anymore!

Then my knight in shining armor appeared…  my husband. “Let’s go have tacos. It’s Taco Tuesday!!”.  OMG, how did I overlook that silver lining. It was Taco Tuesday.

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So off we went to our favorite restaurant for $1 tacos and $4 margaritas.  You cannot beat a deal like that. And after a strawberry margarita, I was feeling way less stressed.

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I even went down the slide at the restaurant!  Look at my happiness. Everything really is going to be OK.

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There is just no way you can be frowning when you go down the slide!  Especially if you’re an adult 🙂

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The next day I made a list of what was stressing me, came up with some ways to fix them, and put the plans into action.  I felt like a weight was lifted.

Alcohol, tacos and slides aren’t always the answer, but with some sleep and lists, it sure made all of the difference for me.

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Q:  How is your stress level?  Do you have a stressful job?

Q:  Do you go to Taco Tuesday or some other favorite dining night?

Alan and I also have “date night” with pizza and beer every Thursday.  That’s our time to watch Survivor!

Q:  Do you have computer skills?  Is your specialty hardware or software?

8 thoughts on “Stress!! Let’s Taco-bout it.”
  1. Working in IT sounds stressful even without a server crash. Ugh, I am so sorry that happened! But good for you for going out and having fun. I think you deal with stress in a very healthy way. Me, I would go home and get in my jammies, have a glass of wine, a big dinner, then go right to bed!

    I feel like I have seen that slide on your blog before! 🙂

    Computer skills… I can type fast. I know how to copy paste. That is it! Whenever I contact the IT help desk at work, I always preface it with, “This is probably something I should know how to fix but I don’t.” Haha!

    Some days my job is very stressful and some days it’s not. There are some students’ behaviors I cannot control but they stress me out and negatively affect the entire class. For instance, there is a life skills student who is included in one of the kindergarten classes and the student comes to music class. On Friday, he decided instead of sitting with us on the carpet and participating, he was going to spin around in a circle and laugh at his aide, who isn’t allowed to touch him. So I had to just keep teaching and me and 24 other students had to ignore him. Then he started running around my room and slamming his body into my desk. Ugh. Do you know how hard it is to keep 24 5-6 year olds focused on music class where there is one other student causing all that chaos?? Stuff like that doesn’t happen every day… but it happens enough that it stresses me out and I get MAD that it’s allowed to happen.

    Sorry, went on a tangent. I guess as soon as I accept that things like that are just going to happen nowadays, the less stressed I will be!
    Megan @ Meg Go Run recently posted…Warning: Don’t run the Safe Harbor Half!My Profile

  2. Hahah that slide looks fun, especially after a couple of margs! I’m glad you were able to de-stress a bit and have figured out your action plan.

    Adam had one of those days yesterday too. He didn’t get home from work until almost 8pm because of IT things coming up out of nowhere, and when he got home I could definitely feel how tense he was so I made him a pizza lol! So I guess the common theme here is that delicious comfort food can reduce stress from IT jobs! 🙂

    1. Food fixes a lot of things! I tend to take the computer stuff personally, which is silly because most times I never caused the problem! But I like to make people happy, so it’s hard to not take it personally. I’m glad most people are understanding of the situation when sometime does happen.

  3. You and I talked that day, and I had an inkling of how stressed you were. Glad you got thru it all and can move on a bit, including #3!

    IT has always been my life. Some people think it’s glamorous, but it isn’t. The only time people care about IT is when something is broken. Most places I’ve worked, the work load is too much to be proactive, so everything is reactive. You can’t get ahead.

    I like to consider myself a jack of many trades in IT, master of none. Always had my hands in a bit of everything. My focus now is automation/development/leading a small team. My career was system administration however.

    Oh, and any night is a good night for tacos and margaritas! In fact, we went last night for some because Abby got all A’s on her report card (or so was the excuse)!
    Dan Clark recently posted…Owens Corning Half Marathon – Training PlanMy Profile

    1. One of the good skills I’ve learned working in banking is to always have a backup and test it out. It is amazing the amount of failsafe plans taken due to auditors getting all in our business! They are such a pain.
      Congrats to Abby!!

  4. I work in software development. And yes, it is stressful. We had several things break this week, plus just general stress with deadlines and coworkers. People think technical writing is basically a cushy desk job but it’s anything but that. I’ve had so many meetings and crap to do. I took this week off running and it was 100% the right decision with the stress levels.

    I love that you went to a taco restaurant with $1 tacos (so cheap!) AND a slide! I haven’t been to a restaurant with a slide inside minus a fast food place maybe and adults can’t go down those slides. I did have tacos for dinner tonight and that was delish 🙂
    Amy Lauren recently posted…Catch the Leprechaun 5K (23:58)My Profile

    1. Luckily I don’t go to many meetings at the bank, but my coworkers sure do!
      You can tell it’s a better quality slide than McDonalds 🙂 Who knows, but maybe it’s only my adult friends and family that go down the slide. But they never stop us! Hahaha

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