I’m still thinking about the implications of Why Everything Suddenly Irritates You - YouTube ever since I watched it this morning. I’ve have noticed an increase in my irritability levels over the last few years and how it comes out as complaints: each flavoured with the internal dialogue of “this should be better”.
The premise is this: as I age, what I over-easily tolerated without question when I was younger is butting up against the realities that I’m facing up to in my middle-age. The irritability is not a sign of something wrong now, but the reality of a correction to something that has been wrongly set in my past.
In the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about the nature of work I do in my job. Yesterday I was struck by incoherence in how I feel when I explain my role verses how I feel when undertaking my role. How can I explain it with genuine passion and at the same time feel loathing at some of the work? I was able to separate this into a Great work passion for solving problems and advising clients and a Bad work component of chasing clients for information and doing their thinking for them (aside: I am struggling to get the wording of this Bad work component right).
My irritability has reached the level where I’m forced into this kind of thinking simply to relieve the pressure. I see now that’s an understatement. I’m actually getting closer to who I want to be in my remaining work years.
Whether it was the YouTube algorithm or the Universe helping me along, and whether this is science or just resonates with me, I now have a new perspective which gives me the power to make change.