My kitchen has two sets of silver, one of my choosing the other inherited. They live one above the other in their respective drawers. Is it so hard to sort them into their proper slots? As I do the task not done by others in my household, I recognize that my irritation is out of proportion to the amount of time the task takes and pause to ask myself, why am I wasting energy being angry?
My “day job” is full of constant and multiple deadlines, with extra “24 hour” ones thrown in randomly, on a daily basis. I used to pride myself on handling them all promptly but lately I’m resenting, and exhausted by the relentless demands and lack of freedom to schedule my days into some semblance of balance.
Familiar, sadly frequent and therefore now expected computer glitches make me increasingly angry, where I used to be resigned to their occurrence.
My cat’s meowing insistence on being tended to NEOW, instead of drawing my attention to her empty water dish, just rouses in me a perverse determination to ignore “yet another demand on my time.”
What the heck? What’s going on? I don’t think of myself as someone so easily angered by meaningless, petty daily events. It certainly isn’t my goal or desire, to be angry! I know I’ve never been a laid back, “whatever” personality, but for most of my life I’ve been able to take changes and uncertainty in stride, adapting as necessary, especially to the demands of a career that has never been predictable. So why, of late, are those same demands so frustrating?
One of the accusations leveled at “older” workers is that they are inflexible and reluctant to adapt and change with changing conditions, new technology, or different performance expectations. It is mostly a myth, that charge. But I see a hint of truth behind it, if I consider my present dislike of the constant barrage of small procedural changes thrown at us weekly, sometimes daily, as my company incorporates a new data management system. Fortunately for the reputation of older employees, most of my coworkers are significantly younger, but they share my sense that it’s time the changes were put on hold and we were allowed to develop some routines and patterns that would permit us to complete our “on deadline” tasks without having to constantly resort to “cheat sheets” listing all the steps for each activity.
Work issues aside, there remains something bothersome to me about my level of irritation with minor disorder. It is so clearly “not worth the cost in energy drain” to become angry about spoons in the wrong slot! I don’t want my cat going without access to fresh water, and I used to be appreciative when she drew my attention to the empty bowl. What has changed?
The easy answer is too heavy a burden in the day job, and that certainly is a truth which I have already addressed with my supervisor. He has responded positively and my caseload is being reduced to the purported standard, after years of me carrying a significantly higher number of clients than we are “supposed” to be assigned. I am appreciative of the anticipated consequent reduction in work schedule from 50+ hour weeks to something more like the standard 40.
I don’t, however, think the easy answer is the “true” answer, since it is not the time needed to sort spoons that angered me, but the fact that others do not seem to respect my desire for order in my kitchen. One of my clients, who has an explosive anger problem, recently blew up over a misplaced measuring cup, accusing his worker of stealing it. I am fortunately not so irrational in my irritation, recognizing instead that something in me needs shifting. But what is that something?
Aha – the perception of older workers may in fact have a kernel of validity, if I acknowledge that the creaks and pains of an older body, which come and go unpredictably (or remain persistent, annoying, and unavoidable) make me/us more reliant on order and control in those areas where we have a small hope of it. If most aspects of a day are orderly, I can more easily handle the unpredictable. True for everyone, no matter the age, I believe. What age throws into the mix is an increase in unpredictable challenges to be handled, mostly arising from the wearing down of the body and an associated decline in physical capacity.
In the past 5 years I have developed an unpleasant response to barometric fluctuations – my bones hurt and I get ocular migraines. The visual distortion of the migraine usually only lasts about 15 minutes and, if I have to, I can continue working despite it, though doing so worsens the headache pain that comes after the sparkling light patterns have faded. Carrying on while in pain is a given for older bodies, but it does draw down one’s allotment of energy. With less “disposable capital” in the form of energy, spending any of it on organizing what someone else “should” have put right themselves can feel frustratingly wasteful of a precious resource.
My client reported that he spent over an hour going through everything in his kitchen, even checking inside the freezer, looking for the missing measuring cup. He was in the midst of making a pie and he had a second measuring cup available to use – “I have one set for wet and one for dry measure. I don’t like to mix them up.” – but let his anger at the lack of order totally divert him from his project.
Without going to the irrational extremes that my elder client accepts as normal (“I have a great deal of anger and fight to control it”) I do see in myself, as I also grow older, a parallel growing desire for what is around me to be consistent, in its place, orderly and reliable so that my daily ration of energy can be used most productively. Having to travel 85 miles in order to have a tech turn off an auto-sync feature in my laptop, costing me half a day of time needed to meet my work deadlines (and hence requiring that I work well into the evening playing catch-up) is a waste of my precious energy resource. I resent that waste. Why didn’t the techs programming my computer think about the limited bandwidth those of us working in rural areas have access to, and NOT program in an unnecessary auto-sync?
I used to be resigned to the fact that techs living and working in New Mexico’s big urban center would not consider the restrictions facing the couple hundred of us in my job category working “in the boonies” when making their decisions. Now I am not so sanguine. I have, in this domain at least, clearly become a stereotypical crotchety older worker.
On my non-work days, I am productive – often highly so, provided the days are not overly pre-scheduled. Using my daily ration of energy according to my wishes of the moment works remarkably well. On this three day weekend, without feeling over tired, I have not only written an essay, cooked five meals, cleaned out the back of my car, done normal daily housework, finished reading two books, balanced three bank accounts, done the week’s grocery shopping, and organized my home office, but also had a half day outing to a spa in Santa Fe (still 85 miles away), a meal out at the home of friends, a two mile walk, and several online chats with friends. Oh, and napped twice. All that done, without any irritation or sense of exhaustion, because it was at my pace and sequenced as I chose.
Which would suggest that older workers only become crotchety when they are subjected to energy-drain in the context of scheduling/demands imposed by others. Give us what needs to be done in a structured way at the start of the day/week/month and leave us to get through it in our own way, and you will have a happy, productive and effective worker, no crotchets.
Oh, and do your own part correctly, please!
1eclecticwriter 
Why I Resist Change
October 11, 2023Three AM is not the best time to be awake, when a good night’s sleep is needed in order to have the energy for the next busy day. But three AM is when, on some nights, my inner self alerts my mind to what it is misperceiving, or not giving sufficient attention to, with subsequent unaddressed emotional stress further depleting my already age-limited energy. My most recent three AM wakening first brought out a well of anger at banks for forcing abandonment of payment by check, through outrageous fees for using checking accounts as they were originally designed to be used – to pay monthly bills, for non-local purchases, and daily expenses when carrying much cash is putting oneself at risk.
Apparently we are now supposed to set all regular payments as automatic withdrawals from an account. I have already experienced the humongous hassle of trying to stop one of those when it is no longer appropriate, and swore I would not go that route again for anything less than a gun to my head. A few current monthly expenses are paid by direct withdrawal, but only as I initiate them each month – nothing automatic. And every time I do provide account information online I cringe, too aware of the risks from hacking, fraud and phishing that we are constantly warned to be alert for.
So what is left? Constant use of a credit card – while monitoring the totals so it can be paid off in full each month, obviating fees. That carries some risk, however – in that the issuer can put a hold on the card at any time, if they suspect there may be a fraudulent charge, and apparently there is no requirement that they promptly notify the legitimate card holder of the fraud alert hold. I was left stranded overseas, my card refused, in one such case. It took three days of long distance calls to get the hold released. And just recently a similar silent hold prevented local withdrawal of cash from an account, again without any notice to me.
We older people are persistently urged to “keep up with the times” as technological “advances” flood our lives. This older person appreciates some of the benefits of interconnectivity, and as a writer I most certainly appreciate the ease of editing and rewriting online, compared to using the typewriter with which I began. Not all the changes and supposed helpers that change my words or think they know better than I do what I am trying to say and how I wish to express it. I still turn off every autocorrect that I can. My grammar remains far superior to that which is programmed into current software.
What I don’t appreciate, and I think gives rise to the misperception that older people are resistant to change, is the present conviction that change is always positive. Nope, sorry. Especially not when the changes are rooted in a serious shift in ethos, values and worldview.
I am far from alone in pointing to major changes in how politicians, pundits, the press and the now fashionable “influencers” present themselves, and their perception of what matters – or should matter – to the rest of us. If I were given the right to name the current period of time I would call it the era of personality cultism. How many followers can I collect, in order to sell their information to advertisers and thereby support myself without having to work for someone else? How do I acquire power to use as I see fit, without regard to the good of others, not even that of my constituents (Mr. Manchin)? How loudly can I scapegoat, point fingers, deflect blame, vilify and generally disrespect anyone who doesn’t bow at my feet? How high can I raise narcissism as a virtue, making it the norm rather than an aberration?
In company with many elders, I resist change when it goes so dramatically against the values I have lived by – that respect and a following are to be earned by honest conduct, thoughtful engagement, respectful listening to different viewpoints, and the search for collective wellbeing. I resist the marketing of absolutely everything, and the abandonment of a belief that not everything has a price. If that makes me a “stodgy old fogey” so be it. I suspect I am still in quite good company, though I accept that the current ethos, especially online, deprives me of the opportunity to find and connect with most of that company.
Would that we had louder voices, more stamina and energy to make our presence, our values and our concerns not just heard but listened to! With awareness that the years ahead of us to act and perhaps make a difference are rapidly diminishing, it is difficult not to despair. If all I can do now is stand firm in my own life, for what I perceive is right, that is what I must do.
So bank be advised – if you won’t let me write checks, I will close my account and go elsewhere!
Tags:aging, Banks, lessons, self-acceptance
Posted in Living and Learning, Social Commentary, technology | 1 Comment »