Old Demons

This past fall, I thought I had finally done it. I'd left all of those old demons behind and I was a normal eater...at last! I was eating just enough - not too much and not too little. I was around sweets and junk food all the time and it didn't bother me if I ate it or if I didn't eat it. My weight dropped to a "normal" BMI.

However, lately I've been fighting my urges again. I put back on 10 pounds or so (though at least I'm only weighing myself every so often and not every day). I started to play the old scripts in my head -- you can't eat that, you can't take a day off from exercising, you have to lose weight. The more I tried to control my eating, the worse it got. I even had a few binges. Nothing awful -- I never felt terribly sick or like I was going to explode or anything -- but definitely eating to the point of discomfort. I couldn't figure out what on earth the problem was.

This week I think I finally realized that I'm not dealing with my unhappiness at work very well. It has been building and building and I now dread going to work on many days. I'm not unhappy with my work, though for a while I thought I was, since I was almost happy to lose a week of work when I broke my elbow and happy to leave the building two or three times a week to go to therapy. It was when the therapy stopped and I was back at work all 40 hours a week that the eating issues started. It's the atmosphere at work that I detest. One of my coworkers is very lazy - doesn't bother to get up from the desk to help people a lot of the time, and spends every minute he is at the desk on the Internet on his own personal stuff. He reads blogs on religion, visits religious websites, participates in religious discussions. I'm not against religion -- we go to church regularly. However, I can't understand how he can reconcile his "deep faith" with his complete lack of work ethic. When he's in his office, he is often reading. To be honest, I'm not really sure what he does that is actually related to the library.

I tell myself that I shouldn't let it bother me. I should just do my work and not worry about him. It does reflect badly on the entire staff when he is very unhelpful. We have lost a couple of staff members due to budget cuts, which means more work for (almost) everyone. I finally told the manager directly that D had spent the entire morning on the Internet while I was working with him (not that he didn't already know). He lamely said he'd talk to him, but for the next few days, D continued the same behavior. The manager sent out an email to all of us yesterday outlining what we could and couldn't do when on the desk, but D spent the time I was with him yesterday and today doing the same thing he always does. I said something to my boss again, but I really doubt anything will be done.

I'm really, really trying to deal with it in a healthy way. Today, whenever I started getting upset about it, I told myself to breathe deeply, concentrate on my breathing, and just let it go. It helped, but every time I saw him, I felt irritated all over again. I told dh that I've really come to dread the days I have to work with him for several hours. I wish I could switch to another branch, but I like most of the rest of the staff, and there isn't going to be another job opening for my position for a reeeallllly looooong time unless someone really screws up. I just need to find some way to deal that doesn't involve eating too much and obsessing about food and my weight. I have a bunch of books out right now on dealing with burnout and how to be happy in your job. I guess what I really need is a book on how to deal with a coworker for whom you feel nothing but disgust.