Dear lexy:
What is your question or what specifically do you need advice for? You called your post a rant maybe because you are stressed, distressed. SO my advice would be at this point to CALM down. Your thinking is not clear when you are distressed. Reducing your distress, be it via deep breathing or distraction/ time out from the situation, meditation, any effective way to calm yourself down would be a step in the right direction: clear thinking.

Take Care:
anita

Dear lexy:
I panic too. I tend to escalate everything into a fear reaction. I am dealing with it this very morning. I don’t like it but I have to deal with it. Can’t order a new fear-free brain online. One way of dealing with the fear reaction for me is instead of thinking of the WHOLE day in front of me and what will I do the whole day, I think or try to think only of the next hour, the next thing to do. Also, I am learning more and more to pay attention to when I am afraid, be mindful, something I did not do or know about before. When I notice the sensation of fear I talk to myself… etc. Hard work and lots more practice is required. When I think too much, obsess- I say to myself- all this thinking is NOT effective and I try to observe it (from the observer part of me) and let it go, think about it later from a state of calm- the only way to think effectively. This rumination/ obsessive thinking is a pain, isn’t it?

Hope you solve your work problem. You wrote that you write things down… I am sure you are intelligent enough to solve most if not all of these problems once you get to the calm place to allow your intelligence to do its best job. So the real problem is the panic thing, the fear reaction, isn’t it? And the real solution then is practicing calm, patiently, repeatedly in a way that works for you- finding the way that works best for you???

Take care:
anita