Panic attack

It has been a while since I have experienced a panic attack. The last time was over a year ago when my ex-guy broke up with me.

My panic attack symptoms are straightforward. My feel like my breathe is short. My chest gets a bit tight. It's not a great feeling.

I used to get these symptoms often when I was in grade 7. I disliked doing presentations in front of the class. These days, I talk so much in front of people that it's not an issue.

My symptoms started happening on Sunday night. It briefly happened after work on Monday. It became full-blown after work on Tuesday.

It took me a while to figure out why. It's the dread that diva woman was taking over a task of mine blindly -- without truly knowing what she needed to do It was the dread of her messing up and the consequences that was and is causing this anxiety.

She drafted up a checklist at 2:30 am on Tuesday for me to review and decided to do this task 6.5 hours later. She had the software release number wrong right off the bat.

Yep, my dread was correct.

This task would take me just under five hours to do. By the time I was done with my workday on Tuesday, she hadn't finished. I realize that it was her first time doing the actual work, but taking eight hours is slow.

I have also realized that she messed up a sequence of changes. Ugh!

Right now, my panic attack symptoms are minimal. It's the case because I am writing about them here and the onus is on her when things aren't right.

I never expected getting a panic attack over this change. Weird. I'm sure that it'll disappear once her work is over.

Shift in supervision, but this change still feels the same

As I had mentioned late last week, my intern is still with our team. His work term has been extended for another four hours. It's wonderful news. The bad news is that I'm no longer directly supervising him.

This year, my duties have shifted. It has taken at least two full-time colleagues to take over roughly 75% of what I used to do. My manager won't admit that I have tackled more than a full workload for years. We both know that's the case.

I saw how worried he was last week. I was in a meeting with these two colleagues and our manager. I used to be in charge of making sure that we got all our deliverables done for each major software release. We have this release in early June. When I did it all, my manager rarely worried. He knew that he could rely on me.

Since he has handed my former tasks to these two colleagues, he is in panic mode. He turned our checklist into a release plan. Ugh!

Well, he decided to have one of these colleagues supervise my intern. So, how many people does it take to replace 75% of what I used to do? Three people so far.

My intern (I'll still call him my intern, even though I don't mean it in the sense of ownership) is capable of pitching in and probably doing a decent job relieving at least one of them.

On Monday, it felt weird. I am now a team of one. Me. However, I ended up assigning my intern work because he had started it last week.

He does miss working with me and the feeling is mutual. We continued to chat through e-mails throughout the day like we usually do. He actually doesn't mind my assigning him work, as his new supervisor hasn't assigned him a thing. I simply have to let his team lead and our manager know.

Right now, he has little to work on. He appreciates that I can assign him work that keeps him occupied and allows him to think critically.

We also talked about storage and organization. We recently found out that we both enjoy chatting about these topics. We have built a good relationship. It's nice.

Coming around and getting a spanking

For years, my manager has deemed me his go-to person for all important tasks. I got annoyed at how I ended up doing all the work and my colleagues just sat around and did little.

I realized why. He trusts me to get the job done. He doesn't have much confidence in the rest of my colleagues. It's a bad sign.

For the last few years, I have told him that I can't be the person who has all the knowledge. It has to be spread around.

Recently, he asked about how to handle the shortage of folks on my team for various reasons. I told him that there should be cross-training across our entire team. My tiny team does everything. The rest of the team has no idea how to do half the tasks that we do.

He liked that idea. He has come around.

This week, he wants our team to write three different proposals. He didn't assign any of these tasks to me. He gave them to three other colleagues. Nice!

I told my guy about this good news.

"It's about time," he said. "You do so much. It's your turn to take a breather."
"Yes, it's nice," I replied.
"Of course, you still need to do what I say. Otherwise, you go over my knee for a hard spanking," he threatened.
"Maybe," I teased.

I like being his bad girl.