Why Me? and other January Tales

The month of January was a rough one. I came into the new year fired up on a project, one which had real impact on the company, and one which I would demonstrate ownership and leadership in changing how we performed engineering. I did a fairly good job of gathering information and getting peoples' opinions and assimilating them into a proposal to be presented to higher management. When it came to making a final proposal to management, however, I bombed! I was completely tongue tied. Frankly, I made a fool of myself. Unfortunately, I think my manager lost a little faith in me after my poor presentation. I would go so far to say that he attributed the results of my work to the more senior members who were involved with the project, and not me at all.

Later, I had to tackle an important engineering problem. Unfortunately, I really frustrated my boss for being slow. He had tried giving me greater leeway to perform my own investigation. Unfortunately, my boss's goals and mine were not aligned, so I ended up being late on delivering the work. Also, I received some negative attention from the CEO who wondered if I was the right person for that job, and whether they needed to hire a consultant. Well, my manager told me this story in an attempt to light a fire under my ass, and I attribute it as such. However, it is always hard to pick yourself up and perform after being told such a story.

Anyways, the point of this story is that everyone goes through a period or rough patch where they ask themselves, "Why me?", and they firmly believe that the world is out to get them. That is the way that I feel sometimes. And it is hard to convince myself, sometimes, that I am not receiving the short end of the stick, or being the target of some poor treatment. Although the latest spiritual gurus and psychology experts claim that you aren't the center of the universe, and that noone is targeting you, I AM beginning to think that some people do attract more ill will from people than others due to their being less socially or politically skilled, being meek, or just with their plain being so brilliant as to incur the jealousy of everyone else.

Case in point: Hillary Clinton. I am in the process of reading Hillary Clinton's autobiography, "Living History", which she wrote about her life up to her winning the senatorship of New York. The number of attacks from the right wing on this lady was unprecedented, and was certainly directed at Hillary specifically. I think that perhaps Hillary's brilliance had something to do with how vilified she was (we all know how mysognistic this society is). However, I also think she was the target because she was obviously wounded and embittered, and bitter people attract bad luck. The enemy likes to kick you when you're down.

I wish that someone could tell me that I am wrong about my theory that some people are more targetted than others, at least in my case.