So this week has been pretty shitty so far. When I say “so far” I mean it’s just awful to begin your week being told that you’re being moved “sideways” in the business. You know when your manager is pretty much telling you that out of a team of 12 people, you and four others were the weakest links, it’s enough to just tip you over the edge and say “fuck this world and everyone in it”.
But then I think, no, I know I’m made of sterner stuff than this. I cried at first but that’s only because the pure shock of the words being uttered to me made me tear up. I am also a little bit (probably a lot more than a little bit) of a baby but then again, there are worse things a person can do than let out some emotion and cry like, oh I dunno, setting fire to the building maybe? So yeah, I think tears at this particular time were actually OK. I still apologised for it because I felt quite weak and vulnerable.
And it’s been a day since then. My manager let me go home for the rest of the day and due to the stress, of course, I got a migraine last night and well, I just didn’t feel very good at all, both physically and emotionally. So I skipped work today. Would anyone blame me? More importantly, if they did, would I care?
And this is what brings me to the nuts and bolts of this post which is all about looking at yourself with unbiased eyes, picking out what you believe are your core values and then re-assessing them. I’m getting to the point in my life where I’m just over the bullshit office politics seems to bring with it. Yesterday, I cared that someone in the management team maybe thought I was shit at my job. Yesterday, I cared about what other people in the company would think of me if I got put into a different team. Yesterday, I gave a whole lot of fucks about things I’ve come to realise aren’t worth the effort or the time.
So I’m writing about it as you do when you’ve got nobody else to tell. I’ve already exhausted my partner to death about what’s going on and the “friends” at work I thought I had I’m not sure of any more. Perhaps a couple of them knew what was coming and they purposefully chose not to tell me or worse, to lie to me about it, therefore removing all responsibility for the fallout to come. I guess I don’t blame them but then again, why shouldn’t I? Doesn’t loyalty mean anything any more? Well to me, it’s pretty damn important. This is one core value I think is good for me to have. But some of the metrics I have been measuring myself by are beginning to do more harm than good to me and mine. And it’s time I changed them.
This morning I wrote a draft letter to my management team about what I would like to see happen IF I accept the role they’ve offered me. There is definitely room for negotiation because my manager told me straight up “I’ve been told by the big boss *name omitted for reasons* to do whatever I can to retain you”. At first, this meant very little to me. But after a restless night of lapsing in and out of a very deep dream state and er, something else, I woke up today feeling like I needed to accept what was happening and make it WORK for me the best way I could.
I’m here, and I’m alive and I’ve got so much to offer even if some of these idiots don’t see it right now. So I’m going to push the bar a little and see what I get back. I DO need to prove to the business I am worthy of keeping (they could have made me take redundancy but they didn’t). So I know that someone somewhere is still batting for me. I need to show that person or persons why because clearly I haven’t been doing that lately.
To be continued, thanks for reading.
Personal post so if you don’t want to read this, tune out now! On Tuesday a category 2 Cyclone hit my city. And it hit it harder than anything I can remember in the past. We’ve had earthquakes before, but the damage from this cyclone seemed to be a lot more prevalent. Power is out for more than 100,000 people. I was one of the lucky ones – my power went off for a few hours and was then restored. I thank god nobody was badly hurt or worse. Only one woman that I know of was pinned down inside her car because a tree fell on top of it. She had minor injuries. I am very relieved that this cyclone wasn’t bad enough to kill anyone – but it was close enough for me to really think about life and how much we really do take for granted. This is what I learned: 