Conflict resolution.

Working as a contract employee or going to school full-time, as I had up until about 18 months ago, I functioned on my own little island of morality and decision-making. I did nearly all my toiling behind the scenes and BS-ed my way through when the pressure was on to sound like I had my act together.

As long as I showed up wearing pants at the agreed-upon time and place, and produced the agreed-upon amount of work product at regular intervals, nobody knew or cared how I managed it. In between, it didn't matter whether I spent 3 months or 12 hours producing a quarterly newspaper or writing a final research paper; I'd still get as many (or as few) accolades as any other time.

I worked it for a long time, because I had sworn off desk jobs and it sounded like the freedom and flexibility that "someone like me" needed, but I was always fighting myself.

I had the great privilege and great burden of having to be my own motivator when nobody else noticed what time I went to bed, what time I got up, when I started drinking beer or how long I procrastinated, of having to talk myself into being intimidated by looming deadlines, and trying to successfully scold or congratulate myself as appropriate—as if I really cared what my opinion of me was.

I rarely faced agonizing conundrums (condundra? snooty term for pickles) because I was almost always the only person I could let down in the long run if I made the wrong decision. Me = not very intimidating to myself. And if I blew it in one arena, I was on to a new professor or new school staff and group of kids to lead every semester, with another tactic (or more likely the same one) for convincing them that I was better than I believed I was.

But now, it's possible to fuck something up and have it blow up on me for an extended period of time. It's possible for people to notice when I do something really idiotic. And then 6 months later, there they still are and here I still am. Pretending not to be an idiot, wondering if I'm succeeding, being told that I am, wondering whether to believe that.

The curious and telling lesson has been that I'm far better off now. The dire extrapolation of that is that I'm only motivated to perform when someone might notice if I suck, whatever that says about me. It seems to mean that I don't respect my own opinion enough to resist the temptation to let myself down, but by golly I respect my opinion when I'm mad at myself because someone else noticed me failing for a change.

I've never been able to successfully scold myself until now, and it's remarkably effective. Which is suitable, because I get very little overt criticism, even when I deserve it. In the past, I could have gulled myself into believing that an absence of criticism probably indicated success, but in an environment where I'm in one place long enough to gauge whether any of my ostensible successes actually pay off over time, that becomes less easy to believe.

I get just enough overt praise to let myself believe that most others think I'm doing alright, but just the prospect of having to work closely with someone who thinks I'm an idiot has made me a champ at policing my own ass.

Now, it's as much about the end work product as it's about showing up whether I have much to do or not (though lately the idea of not is a joke), acting like I want to be there whether I do or not (amazingly, I almost always do), and being friendly, diplomatic and thinking on my toes in between handing over all that work at those prescribed intervals.

Maybe I'm not who I thought I was, if I'm happier and more productive because of, rather than in spite of, the pressure to perform during the intervals between actually producing any work. Three years ago, just the idea of it would have exhausted me, but that identity crisis is an aside.

The biggest difference between the two lifestyles, other than a livable paycheck, has been having to navigate abiding ethical, interpersonal and political dilemmas in a fashion that leaves me on speaking terms with my coworkers, who aren't going anywhere, and in the fair graces of the powers that be (maybe my inner self-critic can be counted among those).

The most common form assumed by these ethical dilemmas (I'm picturing the T-1000 from Terminator 2 here) is the simple question of whether or not to do anything about it when something's nagging at me - something particularly unfair, inappropriate, potentially disastrous, whatever. My thresholds are set pretty high when it comes to letting people do what they will, but when a particular something trips the alarm, I feel like I lack integrity if I willfully ignore it.

I wield no power over anything at work except the candy dish, but toeing the line between choosing to ignore something troublesome because it's not my place to evaluate anyone else's conduct, and risking meddlesomeness by trying to plant a seed with someone who might care to do something about it, could drive me crazy.

This brings me to the whole point of even posting anything. I probably could have forgone the... the foregoing, but the point is I've engineered a very sophisticated system for determining whether I should try to do something about whatever's troubling me.

I have a beer. And if it still bothers me, then I know it's worth worrying about when I'm sober. And then I have more beer until it's no longer bothersome for the time being. Also, if it no longer bothers me after one beer, I still have more beer.