Consequences

I've been reading Yondalla's blog from the beginning for about the past week. This has not been an example of good decision-making, as it has distracted me from work, from washing dishes, from sleeping, and from working on job applications.

In fact, it has been a perfect example of natural consequences.

When one reads a year's worth of blog posts in six days, some themes come up again and again. One of those has been--to put it ineloquently but to include both positive and negative--responding to behavior. There are two sides to this: praise for positive behavior, and consequences for negative behavior. (Though, as I think about it, praise is just one type of consequence of positive behavior. So perhaps there is just one side, and that is consequences.)

At my old job, I rarely got any feedback on my performance, and when I did, it was negative. So when I started my current job and one of the first emails from my boss was positive feedback, I created a "props" folder in my email and started saving certain emails to it so that I could go back and re-read them if I was feeling particularly inept. (This did not help on the day that I remember being passively criticized for incorrect data entry--when all else fails, I know that I'm good at data entry--and spent much of the day bundling pens...because of course that was "all I was capable of doing." That was in my pre-Celexa days.)

I think that I respond well to positive feedback. But only when it comes from an outside source. I don't do well with patting myself on the back. And therefore, I end up experiencing natural consequences--perhaps a subconcious self-sabotage? I let job listings accumulate in my inbox without applying for them, so that the job that sounded perfect closed a week ago. I forget to pay my credit card bill on time despite being able to pay it off, so I have a late fee plus interest. I stay up too late reading blogs and then am tired all day the next day. I do all these irresponsible things and then think that there is no way I'm responsible enough to take care of a kid.

There is another job that closes on Wednesday, so I need to work on my cover letter. I am procrastinating on that by writing this post. But it needs to be hand-delivered (I had a nice snarky comment here but realized it might give away what Big City I live in) so I should get it done to allow for some flexibility in when I go to deliver it. It would be great if the natural consequence of applying is to actually get the job!