"Close Yet Far"

I really should have seen it coming.

This morning, as I was getting ready for work, I caught myself thinking that I'd finally gotten a handle on my "new" job—where I've been working for nearly a year... it's a pretty lengthy learning process. Gimme a break.

I put the toothpaste back in the cabinet and said to myself, "Slow down. The last time you started feeling this confident things totally fell apart." I brushed my teeth, calmed myself down and spit the toothpaste into the sink, assured that I'd dodged whatever karma bullet was surely headed my way for being too prideful about my accomplishments at work—or my lack of extreme failure in at least a month. In a few hours my day started to crumble, and by noon it was in shambles.

Without going into the specifics, my job often depends on others meeting their deadlines in order for me to meet mine. If I miss a deadline because someone else dropped the ball, it's still my fault, kinda like the scene in Goodfellas... "Business is slow? F--- you. Pay me!"

I'm the kind of person who gets very invested in his job. I get heavy boots when things aren't going right, especially when I feel like the fault isn't my own.

But, tonight, all the stress of the workday disappeared as I sang Connor to sleep—as I do most nights. Feeling blissed, I offered a quick thank-you prayer to the heavens and left my protégé sound asleep, his arms wrapped tightly around his stuffed dog, Barkley.

I sat down in front of this computer against my better judgment and checked my work e-mail one last time before bed only to receive more bad news, completely unrelated to any of the issues from earlier.

I wonder if I'll ever learn to quit while I'm ahead...