Are you management material?

because i can assure you that i am not.

that, folks, is why i haven't been posting. i have been literally paralyzed with work for the few weeks and sooner or later something is going to give. i'm betting that it's going to be my sanity.

last week, a member of my team gave me his letter of resignation. he did it with such trepidation, and prefaced it so much with "i'm so sorry - i know this is really bad timing" like comments that i just took it, said thank you, told him i understood and handed it off to the big bosses. then i walked into the conference room where i had a meeting scheduled with my one "work friend" and proceeded to burst into tears.

he was so stunned, and so uncomfortable that he just kept talking. "are you okay? can i get you anything?" i told him i just needed a minute, and i'd be fine. sure enough, five minutes later, i was no longer crying and had steeled myself to the outside world.

but the truth is, i'm tired. i'm not a good manager. i am the kind of person that will work until i collapse to get something done when i'm under pressure. but not everyone else works that way.

and you can't really expect people to be that way. because a) most people are not like you and b) most people have lives. i don't want to be the kind of manager that forgets about that.

so today i baked a cake for two people leaving (one on my team) and we bought them some little parting gifts. sure it was a bailey's cake and sure i used this opportunity to nip from the bottle in order to restore my daily sanity. but that just makes me closer to an alcoholic than a bad manager, right?