Today wasn’t as bad as yesterday, but my brain is still pretty fried.  My afternoon has been pretty chill: I finished one of the layouts I was working on, and there wasn’t quite enough time to start the next one.  Don’t you hate that when it happens?  I’d like to be productive, but sometimes you just reach a good stopping point.  It’s just unfortunate when that point doesn’t line up with the end of the work day.

That’s not to say that my entire day has been stress-free.  No, I freaked out a bit earlier, once I realized that I had to go back and tweak a drawing I thought I had finished, all because I missed one of the conventions our office uses.  I thought I was going to have to re-draw everything, tweaking all the sheets I’ve done so far.  Oh, and my boss jokingly mentioned that I was supposed to be done with this project already.  Isn’t that just great for my self-esteem?

Luckily, I realized that instead of beating my head against the desk (although there was a bit of that nonetheless), I needed to take a step back from the problem, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to eat something as well.  What’s that, I can be taught to monitor myself for signs of low blood sugar?  I can remember that there are easy solutions to problems?  Weird, right?

Okay, okay, it did take me a minute or so to realize I could do that, I’ll admit.  But once I did, it helped a lot.

I’m also trying to not stress too much about when this project was “supposed” to be done.  After all, it’s the first project I’ve done on my own.  My first few weeks here I was mostly doing corrections on drawings my coworker had done.  Sure, it was stressful, but at least I had someone I could easily ask for clarification, where I could just be a CAD monkey.  But this project is different.  I’ve basically been working on it from scratch, taking existing linework and reformatting it, making it fit our office templates and cleaning it up.

As I’ve gone along, I keep noticing things that need correcting, or things that could be done better.  Sure, maybe my innate tendencies towards perfectionism are making me spend too much time on the little details; I’m willing to admit that.  But this is also the first project I’ve done on my own since starting here.  Of course I’m not going to be as efficient as I could be just yet.  So I’ve decided to treat the bothersome “ribbing” from my boss as just that: ribbing.  Unless I get an actual talking-to, I think I’m doing alright.

Let’s see how that goes.