Today was our big one-day fundraising campaign at work. Basically, we were tasked with getting 4,000 donations within 24 hours in order to receive a half mil donation from an alumni couple. Leading up to this event, I was starting to get a little stressed. The goal not only seemed rather arbitrary, but it was also kinda ambitious. I couldn’t sleep the night before. In fact, I had an anxiety nightmare where in my dream, I woke up three hours late, and the boss was calling/texting asking where the fuck I was. Of course, in real life, I got up really early and was the first one into the office. I did the pre-launch tweaks and then we were off to races at 8a sharp. From then on, I pretty much live-tweeted all damn day. Along the way, my tightass coworker came by and made a comment about me being cranky lately (Hardly!! I was livid that ONE day last week and that didn’t even involve a face-to-face confrontation!), but she said on the plus side, I was doing a great job, and hopefully, my mood would be better after the campaign was over. Nice. Is she my mother, bc I am all too familiar with that backhanded compliment bullshit. That said, in moments like these, I try to embrace the radical honesty approach. Maybe I just need to be more cognizant of how I react. Regardless, the morning kicked off pretty well. There were a lot of interruptions, including an oddly-timed project meeting (uh, why wouldn’t you meet to discuss logistics and details BEFORE the event?), but thankfully, my last workplace trained me well for frequent disruptions and random meetings. Then, a couple of times, my boss invited the head honcho to my office to show him 1) a video made by my new coworker and our intern and 2) my social media control center. I was like, why does he need to see my twitter/social media admin pages? Just tell him what I do. But she felt it was important for him to see it. I dunno. So fine. I was feeling ok, because the donation numbers were climbing rather steadily (about half way to the goal before 1p). On the other hand, the head honcho expressed that he was “concerned.” Dude, we’re only 5 hours into the challenge. He then admitted to being a worry wort. Great, just what I need. An hour later, the executive director of the student call center came by and asked what else I had planned for social. He said things were starting to level off. Uh, it’s called the post-lunch food coma. Do you really think people are productive and on it in full force straight through the day? Uh hello, who do you think they are, ME?? Haha. Kidding aside, these two were starting to stress me out. About another hour later, the office manager forwards me an email from a young alum complaining about the quality of the institution’s social media channels. I’m paraphrasing here but her basic gist is: The content doesn’t reflect all the world-changing work the community is doing. There are all these irrelevant memes that water down how the school will be taken seriously. The photos are shit. I talked with my colleagues, and we looked at competitor schools’ social channels together, and they all agree with me. Generally, I consider myself a logical thinker. I like to examine both sides and thoroughly think about multiple facets. And I’m sure that on any other day, I would have been irritated by the criticism but not upset. But this afternoon just started turning to sludge really fast. On top of me doing the constant live-tweeting crap, people kept harassing me about making my personal donation to the effort. Yeah, basically, all faculty and staff were expected to give something. It’s fine, it’s not as if I don’t have $10 to give, but I just really don’t appreciate the bullying/peer pressure tactic. Still, I know I have to pick and choose my battles, so I agreed to donate. Well, I dunno if people didn’t have confidence in my follow-through or what. They kept bringing it up. Blah blah. I was the ONLY one in the entire staff of 100+ people who hadn’t given yet. Meanwhile, the challenge runs through 8a the next day. We have time. I know people weren’t intending to be naggy, but I really don’t like being told repeatedly what to do. It’s like living with my Chinese parents all over again. I’m very automatic in that once you tell me what has to be done, I figure out the how and why by the designated deadline. So yeah, all of that bullshit combined with this feedback email just caused a mini meltdown. Not a huge and dramatic one, but definitely one where talking about it to my bud K resulted in a quivering voice and tears. The great thing about K is that she groks things super quickly. She understood that multiple factors in this moment– me already being doubtful of social media and modern day communications in general, my annoyance with incompetent people across campus, my personal quasi-self destructive OCD/workaholic tendencies, my recent existential crisis– culminated into this (im)perfect storm. She reminded me that this person’s was one comment out of thousands of people who follow the page. I knew the sense in that argument, but I just couldn’t control my response today. And in turn, I was pretty pissed about having such a thin skin. Suck it up, wussy pants! By 4p, we had hit 3,000 donors. I heard the development folks cracking open the booze. On my drive home, we actually met the 4,000 mark. Just as I sat down to eat dinner, my boss texted asking what I was going to post for reaching the goal. Uh, the challenge keeps running until tomorrow morning. I can tweet about reaching the goal and then post final numbers and thanks after the campaign ends. She really wanted us to post tonight. Ok. That makes sense too. Interestingly, a few weeks back, I had specifically asked Development for some guidance should the goal be met early. Would there be a second goal? Any language? I was told the goal most definitely wouldn’t be reached until overnight. Ok, thanks for that misguidance. Fine. Did some minor tweaks and then posted. Done. As soon as I got that finished, I came across one of my dad’s emails (which I get tasked with monitoring while he is overseas– not that he doesn’t have wifi over there!) and learned that my grandfather in Maryland fell, had brain surgery, and was in a coma. WTF. So I called my dad in Taiwan, and he had found out himself via email. Jesus Christ. He doesn’t check email daily, so like we are dealing with the goddamn pony express in 2015. I dunno whether people don’t know how to make international calls, or dad is being cheap or what, but some news requires the phone!!! So when I talked with him, he was trying to get a flight back home. No flights. Had my cousin trying to help with that. And no conversations with the doctor or nurse. I mean, I understand the scramble, but before you hurry to get flights, should’t you assess the situation? I call my grandmother, and their friend Mrs. Li (who drove my grandfather to the hospital) answers the phone. She’s speaking to me in Chinese, so some of the medical stuff I don’t know the translation, but she suggests that the situation is serious. At the same time, she suggests that I NOT hurry home, reasoning that he is in a coma, and I can’t do anything for him. I then call the nurse. Kind of a different story. He fell and hit his head. They did surgery to drill a hole in his head to remove the hematoma and drain/relieve pressure. Surgery went fine. He is intubated to help with breathing, but he can breathe on his own. When they tried to remove the tube, he had a seizure which sometimes happens after head injury. He is in a medically induced coma but is stable. Aside from the head injury, all other vital functions check out fine. I call my dad with the information. Why didn’t he call the nurse directly? He’s a retired doctor, so this would have all made sense. Sure, the nurse was reluctant to talk, saying she could only reveal information to family on site. I explained that I was his closest family right now with my parents being overseas. It took some explanation, but then she talked. Regardless, my parents wanted to come home. My cousin was supposedly not finding any flights back to the US. Meanwhile, I logged into dad’s United miles account and got three award tickets for that evening. Done. Then, I got my own ticket for an hour later from when I booked. Done. Threw shit into a suitcase and Bubbey drove like Speed Racer to get me to SFO. I was the last one to board the plan, and I was sweating like a pig, with my fucking suffocating toupee on. I was going to wait til take off to remove. Well, a mechanical problem delayed us an hour with all the cabinet lights on. Then when we finally went to take off, the plane sped up, then slowed, sped up, then slowed. Back to the gate for a different maintenance. We finally got in the air at 1a. Fucking A. This was one helluva never-ending day.