Dementors in Our Lives

"Dementors feed upon human happiness, and thus cause depression and despair to anyone near them. They can also consume a person's soul, leaving their victims in a permanent vegetative state, and thus are often referred to as soul sucking fiends. They are known to leave a person as an empty shell."
   From Harry Potter.

In other words, and in many cases, Dementors are like administrators or bosses. You can feel their presence before the key is placed in the lock to the office cubicle area that three of us share. Your soul begins to be sucked out as they talk about how we have to do assessments of our programs, they have a "new" assignment (meaning we just did it within the last year but must repeat our mistakes or they forgot we already tried that, whatever "that" is) or you have to come up with a solution to a problem that affects them (but not you).

Dementors can be found at staff meetings or on committees you serve on throughout the workplace. Students (or co-workers) can even be a dementor. A piece of your soul gets sucked out when you help a very needy student with an issue, then the next week, or hour, or sometimes within a few minutes they need help with the problem again. They learned nothing from you. They don't understand why you just won't do it for them (whatever "it" is, homework, learning how to use a computer program, etc.).

To battle the workplace dementors you must follow a healthy diet. Why? Because if you are eating healthy 90% of the time and taking your B vitamin complex and multivitamins the glass(es) of wine or Southern Comfort on the rocks you have before and during dinner to calm your soul will be negated.

Another strategy is to exercise. Running works well, though I am still out of commission due to recovering from an injury (but coming back soon). So I swim, bike and lift weights. Today, after an unexpected visit from one of my bosses (well, not totally unexpected as it seems she comes in every day to suck a bit more out of my soul), and soon after a committee meeting, I had an internal debate about swimming.

Next week the pool will be closed due to Spring Break. I swam yesterday during lunch and lifted weights last night. I was tired. Do I swim today or not? I went to my gym locker and my suit was still wet. I closed the locker, headed out but stopped at the bathroom. The internal struggle went on. I headed back to the locker, got changed and found a lane all to myself. After swimming 1200yds I felt re-energized and pieces of my soul had come back to me.

I remember thinking that maybe now I could go back to work and fight the dementors for a few more hours before heading for home. Hopefully they leave me alone until quitting time. It could also be that I need to learn to summon a Petronus Charm like Harry Potter.