How Is It Fair?

Last Friday I had my first fuck-up at work: instead of filing something in court, I filed it in the office.

Everyone acted like the difference was obvious, but I ask: how is that even fair? All week I got mostly organizing work; my attorneys' affairs are a mess because my predecessor left 3 months ago, and all they told me was: Clean it up. And the same word got used for both kinds of tasks: "filing." Besides that, I've been getting by with next to no supervision or instructions (of the five people who could supervise me, three of them were gone for a good chunk of the week), so I say if anything I deserve a medal for figuring out what needs to get done on my own.

After that fuck-up, I got a little flustered, and compounded with my new case of yuppie-flu, I was pretty uncoordinated, and spent Friday afternoon trying to stay under the radar.

What a bad sign it is if I'm already developing a tense relationship with my boss in the first week! I think I might just have a problem with authority figures. I try not to, but I can't help it. James was nice enough about the fuck-up, but I could tell that he was extremely aggravated, and as much as I could understand that and sympathize with him, I also couldn't help letting it aggravate me. The fact is I need a thicker skin. I gotta be able to go through phases of being less than beloved professionally, and not let it crush me. I don't know how people do it. I just know that if I don't learn soon, I'm going to fail in everything I attempt.