Dear President Trump,

It’s been a rough few days and I’ve been especially out of sorts today. My cold is some better, but I’m still exhausted, coughing a fair bit, and not sleeping well. The main thing, though, is that Friday is the day the entire mental health service moves into our new building and it’s been incredibly stressful being part of a mass exodus out of old familiar spaces and into brand new, very different ones. The new building is much fancier and there will be sufficient space for all the clinical and teaching activities we do so there are lots of pluses.

Indeed, most people are really thrilled. I imagine I’ll come around in time, but I really like my current office. The new one is less than half the size, and worse, it’s on the ground floor right off the ambulance driveway facing a blank wall. There’s a pedestrian walkway directly adjacent to the building and I’ve already been startled quite badly by someone thinking it was funny to slam the window from the outside. Not good.

You see, the building is set right next to a lovely golf course and most offices face said golf course or are up high enough to have pretty views of the Sound. So really what I have is an acute case of the “it’s not fairs,” which I know is ridiculous and which I’m trying mightily to overcome. Obviously I’ve not made much progress yet, but some day I won’t begrudge my colleagues their nicer digs every minute of every day. Maybe when I’m through with this cold I’ll get an attitude adjustment as a bonus. We’ll see.

Even though I’d rather be past caring about such things, it’s a good object lesson for me about how easy it is to get caught up with who gets what square footage, where, when it’s all perfectly adequate. Sometimes it really does make sense to fuss and go to the mat about inequities so it’s not that I wish I were Zen about everything; it’s just that in this situation there’s nothing that I can do about it and “it” really isn’t all that bad.

Well, I do feel some better having gotten this off my chest. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll feel like writing to you about something more substantive and I won’t bore myself like I am tonight (boring myself with my gripes may just be the answer, though…. 🙂 )

May we all be safe to be fussy sometimes.
May we willing to acknowledge our petty tendencies and to move on from them.
May we not get overwrought about stuff that doesn’t really matter much.
May we save our energy for things that do matter, including peace and love.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson