failure

so i'm having just this horrible day. i'm at work and everything frustrating is happening; it's just a long list of tedious tasks and things that require fifteen phone calls and writing the same thing over and over and over again on different sheets of paper. the thing is, when i'm mad, i try to be patient-- and i try to act patient, and i try to sound patient-- but i'm not fooling anybody. my voice may be saying "this is doctor so-and-so from family medicine, i was paged" but you can clearly hear the "@#$*&^!!!!!!!" trying desperately not to reach my vocal cords. when i'm mad, i try harder and harder to not sound mad and my voice gets slower and clearer and higher and sort of sing-song-y and the harder i try the worse it gets.

and i know that a hospital is basically a building full of people who are at the end of their ropes-- patients, family members, nurses, pharmacy technicians-- everyone just wants to scream and leave. we've all just had it up to here with each other and with this place and it is literally all we can do to keep a thin veneer of civility on our increasingly searing annoyance. i know that we're all just sick to death of being here, of slogging through the mountains of paperwork, of fighting over every scrap of resources, of the endless checking and re-checking and forms and phone calls. i know that we could all just use a little kindness, a little patience, a little understanding, a smile, and i try, really i do, but my smile looks less sincere as the day goes on, my writing gets messier and messier the more i hate the form i'm filling out, my walk turns into a stomp, my gaze into a glare, and my voice we've already discussed.

so i retreat into my iPod, which is loaded with inspirational talks at the moment. the one i'm listening to presently has to do with good character. people of good character are cheerful, it says, and do good works easily. i've been waiting for it to tell me what to do when you don't quite measure up, when "cheerful" isn't quite one of the first 5000 words you'd use to describe yourself. today it mentioned, briefly, that the trick is to keep trying.

and failing, i suppose.

but keep trying.