It's Wichigan

 Haha. Feeling mischievous. I was watching an episode of Shrill and they were making fun of the states outside of New York and California.

I think one of them is Wichigan, they said. It made me laugh. 

Although I think about this job literally every waking minute, I clocked in under 30 hours of active work this week!

Wheee! 

My boss makes it difficult to hold a grudge. She's just so affable and friendly.

Eventhough my brain tricks me into thinking that she's in some evil dungeon plotting my demise, she is still kind and gracious to me. It's freaking confusing. 

I don't know how to disagree with someone. 

If you disagree with me I just feel like you're wholly against me in EVERY SINGLE WAY in EVERY SINGLE MOMENT!

So when I'm upset that my workload seems uneven, in my mind this is intentional and it's because she hates me. When I don't see any inkling that I'll get to be project manager or AD, I see this as a deliberate affront. 

When she doesn't discipline or reprimand My Buddy, I think this is intentional to make me the go-for. 

Why do our brains do this to us.

I know I am intentionally not putting forth the effort I used to and I do it spitefully. I want her to feel my pain. When she doesn't even notice - I don't know if that makes me feel more or less justified. 

In our meetings this week, she is pleasant and helpful and amicable and friendly. She's the woman I still admire and adore and kind of want to be a little bit. It's very confusing being me. 

Then I feel bad and want to up my game again.

But I have to remember this wheel didn't turn into a ladder. 

Then I hear one of her other managers is going to take over an entire vendor. Like a whole vendor and team. I don't know if I heard that correctly because that manager would essentially be the her (a Director) for one of the vendors. THAT'S HUGE. That can't be right because he would be reporting to an Associate Director.  I think I was scared to ask because I didn't want to know the answer. 

Then it makes me think, maybe I should bide my time and pay my dues. And MIND MY BUSINESS.

I notice her reference me a lot in meetings. Now, I don't know if it's the thing you do when you're trying to encourage someone who is weak (where in this case I'm the weak one) OR that thing you do when you're trying to positively reinforce and praise good behavior so that other people will catch on (i.e. my buddy). I think the latter is just wishful thinking because I've been trying for a year to subtly nudge My Buddy to do better but no dice. 

She defends My Buddy to the death so that's just wishful thinking as much as me thinking going above and beyond is going to amount to anything other than burnout.

This was not supposed to be a rant post.

I had 3 things causing me to cast out the world.

- Prepping for this interview on Tuesday

- Writing out some notes for a process we're trying to operationalize

- the wet spot in my ceiling

I didn't want to do either of those 3 things. So a couple hours ago, I finally decided to prioritize 1. The interview is Tuesday. So I chose that.

The writing out of the process is what I would aptly do when I was churning without hesitation but New Me is calling it an Extra, so that cannot be a priority.

And the wet spot doesn't really have an immediate resolution. It's just a long list of phone calls. And honestly as long as I don't use that toilet, the problem is mitigated. 

See when I hear how the Boy Manager is hard working and feeling overworked, it makes me think she does value and see hard work. But I don't really hear her saying that about me. 

I will say not going above and beyond feels BAD. I feel bad. I feel like I'm cheating myself and her but it's kind of working. I willfully didn't attend 2 meetings. Nothing happened. I didn't respond to a couple emails that I usually jump to get to. Nothing happened. Things can just go undone and there's no real consequence. Which makes me think my impact was not as huge as I thought. 

Is this what it's like to be lazy. 

I guess I just feel like for a lot of this stuff, I've done my part. And the time to handoff the responsibility to my other teammates has past. 

This month, I'm going to prioritize my 1 project and leave other things for my teammates to pick up. 

-So my new program (my actual job)

- The Monday reporting (what I was suckered into)

I think that's enough for July.

I'm also leaning into the high of the possibility of getting this job I'm interviewing for on Tuesday. 

Once the rejection comes, the spiral will follow and last probably all of July. Then by August, I can still focus on my project. There are still a lot of things to build and follow-up on. So I'll just leave that as my focus.

So now we're in mid-August. I can extend that to end of August.

And there goes 2 months of keeping my head down and minding my business. 

I'm even going to try to transition these Learning Refreshers away from me. At the very least, I'm not making anymore content.

I'll just write a memo and they can create the content. 

And our Roles and Responsibilities meeting got moved another week. Ha! So much for me thinking it was because she was secretly advocating for me to get a promotion/raise. Ha! What a stupid woman I am (as I secretly still think maybe she just needs more time). Ha!

I wanted to get ribs and smoked meats for this weekend to feel part of the celebration but it's pouring down rain now. 

I feel icky taking advantage of not doing 200% but if these are the rules, then why wouldn't I play be them?