Am I actually the dumb one?, Anxiety, and A Little Blip

 My manager did a crash course with the vendor today for the 4 to 6 week training plan we have coming up. My other teammates didn't show up. Is everyone just super confident, and I'm the only one suffering behind the scenes? 

It seems so. I have so much anxiety with these trainings because I don't feel like I know what I'm doing. But no one else prioritized attending. 

I'm glad I did because I know a lot more than I thought I did. 

Which makes me feel like an idiot for panicking so much. 

I just can't break out of the panic-mode habit I have when I'm put on the spot. 

Anyway it's all butterflies and rainbows for me right now. Yesterday, I happened to be at the Food Lion at the right time to notice they have a wings bar! Some days I just want to eat fried things. I had just a plate of French fries for dinner three times in the last 7 days. And those fried wings tasted oh so yummy yesterday! 

I can't wait to get more for dinner. 

And then Mint sent an email about their updated features. I couldn't tell what they were, but I was clicking around and noticed that sometime this month in March my assets hit a record high of $400k (4/2/21 Update - turns out one of my accounts was counted twice, so nope, still very much in the 300s). !! Can you imagine, poor little me?? I mean it's gone down a lot since then but it was still super fun to see! 

Poor little discontented me. I don't even remember what my reach goal was for assets to serve as an inflection point. I hide so many signs of hope for myself, that even I can't find them when I need them. Well, in the end it's good because hope usually lets me down. 

Anyway because of fried chicken and a blip of $$, I am riding this cloud until the next chasm of disappointment. I'm sure it won't be long. 

I'm not even good at phoning it in

 So I already knew that when I follow what other people do, I usually have to suffer different consequences. Remember that PowerPoint that I had to do that I just couldn't bring myself to spend the requisite minimum 4 hours to do? Well, it keeps resurfacing its ugly ahead.

My first hour was a pure copy and paste job from a Technical Guide. I didn't even give it a once over before submitting for review. I really didn't think anyone would notice given some of the stuff I've seen come through my inbox. 

I got half a dozen comments from my manager. I did preface it with that I just copy and pasted. As much as I am trying to do only the work I'm compensated for, I still want to save face. Like, listen... I am acknowledging that this is not my best work. Don't judge me. 

It took another hour of revisions with the help of a subject matter expert. Okay, so now we're up to 2 hours.

Then it went through a group review. If I do what she suggests, I feel like it's another 1 hour added to my time. 

So I saved maybe 1 hour, and then I still have to probably spend another hour actually learning what's on the slides or prepping somehow before I present it.

So was that worth it? In this case it doesn't seem that way. I potentially saved no time and effort and just got my feelings hurt and potentially now a lot of people have seen my mediocre work. So much for that. 

I certainly didn't gauge this correctly. Ugh. 

And now a part of me still wants to overcompensate and add a little zhoush to the presentation day-of. But who knows at this point. Whatever I do, it will take me at least 4 more hours. And that doesn't include the time spent thinking about it and mulling it over. Or the scratch notes I've already made. 

Then it occurred to me - my mindset is I'm not really growing professionally in this job. Management is a lot of admin work. I haven't really had one original idea. It's mostly just executing on tasks. So, in 9 months there's nothing I feel I've learned that's a marketable technical skill, and I already know I can't sell soft skills. So that's part of my discontent for this job.

But today I thought...or... I could consider this job the perfect culmination of things I'm already good at. I mean, I learned PowerPoint in high school. I already know how to answer emails. And I could say I have the 5 years of experience in the Call Center, but naturally the white leadership team at the vendor had no call center experience and they're in similar roles. And then there's the white man on my team they hired with no experience also to do this job. So that makes it really hard to buy into the alternate narrative. 

Unless somehow I can stop comparing myself to other people. Unlikely. I was trying to find some solace in other people's internet stories and I read an article that kind of stated it plainly, your job is not a meritocracy. So, true! I literally get paid the same as someone creating a PowerPoint that took 1 hour vs 8 hours.  PowerPoint is just not a skill I need to develop. So it's hard to justify it. 

And I'm not getting paid to be a trainer. So I don't know how to navigate this. Doing my best is just burnout territory. It's not the smart way to approach the corporate world, so I'm in need of some direction. 

Oh something neutral happened. I got all excited because for yet a third time, my manager brought up the birthday taco lunch I cancelled. So I thought, oh my gosh she really likes me. Then thought, oh my gosh, is this my chance to talk about the bonus!! Neither. I did schedule it for today, so yay, at least it can't come up again. But we ended up using the time to continue a meeting that ran over. 

This isn't working

 Ugh, there are already 3 emails in my inbox of things to do next week and beyond. From my perspective, I was trying to stay in my lane, not do other people's work, keep my head down and mind my own business. It didn't work. 

Now I just have more stuff to do in a shorter period of time because everyone isn't holding up their end of the bargain. I was trying to stop focusing on what my teammate wasn't doing, but doing so just meant me catching what's fallen between the cracks.

I don't work best in reactive mode but that's how my team seems to operate. Just running around like a chicken with the head cut off. 

But I'm being advised by people in my life not to work nights and weekend. And truthfully after that darn basic bonus, working nights and weekend is uncompensated. So I don't really want to work for free. 

But what do you do when the work isn't getting done? I don't want to look stupid doing trainings I don't know how to do. 

I don't know how to approach this job and now my eyes are stinging on the brink of tears. 

I don't mind doing the work I'm assigned to do at the beginning of when I'm assigned to do it. I don't like doing other people's work at the last minute or not knowing it was my job to do it. 

I thought this girl was supposed to be reviewing these decks. Isn't that what the workstream and those meetings were for? 

So how do I account for other people not doing their work and it landing in my To Do box at the last minute. I don't like it. It makes me anxious. 

I just can't wing a powerpoint. I just can't. I know some of the people that trained me can and do. But I can't just make up stuff and I'm not comfortable being a trainer and saying "I don't know." I know I hate it as a learner when I hear that. It just kind of derails the training for me. It lowers my confidence in the trainer. 

But maybe that's it. If they're not paying me to get good, then they get basic. To match that Basic Bonus? 

It's just a complete mental paradigm shift for me. How much dumber and lower can I and my expectations get? 

Solitary Confinement and My Last Job

 I feel like my brain and body have given up without my explicit consent.  I haven't showered all year. It's been 2 days since I brushed my teeth. I have to brush regularly because my gums actually hurt and my teeth feel scummy. But I just got used to my body odor I guess. 

Yesterday was another frustrating day having to do with training content. The things I wish I could say - as a learner, it's an undesirable experience to have more than one voice and 86 different emails about training. In one session we had like 4 speakers provide some sort of intro. This is after the 86 emails. I get it, everything needs to be collaborative and cross-functional. But it's a crappy user experience.

And I was till navigating my new life as an agreeable employee, so I couldn't speak up. But surprise, surprise! I'm now responsible for using said training content to deliver a 4-week training.

I just don't get what the flipping issue is. Everyone in the world has received some training at some point. Why did we have to have multiple UN conventions to figure out how to create and deliver training? 

I can't find a way out. I just can't.

I realized it's been over a year now since I've engaged with another person. I don't think I'm quite a shut in because I'll make short runs to get food. But I'll be lucky if I look up or exchange more than a few words. All of a sudden, a year passes and you realize you haven't fully seen another person - breathed them in, experienced them, interacted with them. 

My eyes hurt because every waking hour (including this one at 3a) is in front of a screen of some sort. 

I've said before that I'm just waiting to die and this is the house I die in. But it's never felt more so than in this moment. 

Against my better judgment, I scoured the internal job board but just couldn't bring myself to set up another informational session. 

Am I allowed to just opt-out of the life I've been given. Despite all my best efforts, I just couldn't quite get the outcome I so desired. 

I've adapted myself out of the life I initially craved. I don't even know what it was anymore. 

Also what are my neighbors doing at 3a. The last few times I've been up and out of bed at this hour, there's been activity in the parking lot. What the heck are y'all doing - I know it's nothing nice. 

I know lots of people re-invent themselves at 40, but I don't think I'm one of them. 

So this is my last job even though I am still harboring some sliver of hope that something will fall out of the sky. Laughable. 

It seems pretty fitting. My aunt died an unremarkable death after trying so hard to live a remarkable life. I might have been her greatest achievement. My father, the same.

Why were we ever told it matters?

This is what prayer feels like to me. God, may I have some M&Ms. I stick my hand out, and I get 40 lashes. But I keep sticking my hand out, and I keep getting 40 lashes.  Sometimes though, I stick my hand out and I get M&Ms covered in dog doo.  Or sometimes, I look back and I see the M&Ms scattered alongside of the road, but I was too busy tending to the wounds from my 40 lashes to have noticed.  That's what it feels like. 

I just want to stick my hand out and get the M&Ms right after the tastiest meal, cold and crunchy and satisfying. That's it. 

So at this point, this job is just buying me time to wait out the pandemic. I gave it my all, and it just wasn't enough. My boss's words aren't enough after that basic bonus score. I can only focus on the bonus score because it's easier to focus on the negative. I want to have a bad experience so I don't have to keep feeling so disappointed. About everything - this and all else. 

I'm so sedentary these days it hurts my legs to stand up and load the dishwasher. I literally lie in bed until it's time to get up and work. Sit down to work, get back in bed to eat, then lie down again. 

I'm losing my mind because I don't talk to anyone or see anyone. I don't watch the news. I hear current events through off handed comments in office meetings. 

It's hard to care when I don't see an endpoint. 

That bonus score really crushed me and it was the inflection point I was looking for. And yes, even after gently trying to re-introduce it with my boss she stuck to her story. But the data doesn't lie. 

These outcomes are uncontrollable so I just remain adrift. It's not my favorite place to be.

I was clicking through an old post. I recently stumbled upon another FIRE blog who was very vocal about how much they hate FIRE. And how they only started to hate their job after pursuing FIRE. I started to think - did I hate work after FIRE or is it because I hate work that I started to pursue FIRE. I wanted to get on board with this new blogger. But after clicking around, I realized her posts were just click bait. It was much of the same recycled content repackaged with new catchy titles. So anyway, I clicked through one of my posts from 2018, and I've been pretty ready to leave the workforce for awhile. I've been wanting to accelerate this long, long, journey for awhile. 

I've never liked work. In high school, I found it silly to work to own a car to drive to work to pay for it. I'd rather just stay home and have my parents take care of me. Duh.

Those people who are proud to have been working since they were teens - ugh? Why can't your parents take care of you? 

Once, I had to pay for a dance camp I wanted to attend. I worked as a waitress until I saved up enough money for the camp. It was not even a second thought to quit after I had the money I needed. 

Even in professional school, a lot of other students worked to gain experience and pay for their living expenses. Instead I amassed a 6 figure debt. I mean, it was going to be 6-figure no matter what, there was no way intern work was going to amount to anything.  In my mind, why would I spend that energy working for ducats when I knew I had to work for 30 years after graduation. 

I'd always thought that was the path. That is the path typically. 

Working doesn't give me purpose. 

The only thing I can't figure out is what the heck I'm going to do after I quit work. When I quit Call Center #1, I felt completely unhinged. And even now, even with 60 hour weeks, I still have a bunch of free time that I don't know what to do with.

I fear since I'm already on this solitary confinement, shut-in path, that not much else will change no matter how many social goals I set for myself. I'm bored in the house. I literally stare at the wall or the ceiling at multiple points throughout the week, but I can't be bothered to do chores or get out of the house. 

This is what my life has come to. How did I get here?

Mixed and Neutral Feelings

 Well at least feeling nothing is closer to my normal.

I feel like a zombie. 

Sometimes I have these really encouraging moments at work where I feel like yes, I can do this. I WANT to do this. But most times I feel like what am I doing here. 

Then there're moments like these where all I can do is wonder when will it all end. 

I don't have any new complaints. Same ole:

Am I ever going to get good at this?

Why so many conversations with no actions?

What exactly am I supposed to be doing?

Why did I ever leave Call Center #1?

When I calculate my hourly wage based on actual hours worked, I'm making less than I did as an intern. Womp, womp. 

I did have a couple of high emotion events that normally would have lasted longer and been cause for much consternation with my colleagues, but so far I mostly just want to get back in bed and eat Lucky Charms. It's mostly when I try to sleep that I'll be stuck in replay. 

My cousin I don't like that much hasn't called me back. Neither has my racist friend. Their loss, right?

At least I'm not spiraling over something at work. Not consistently, but in fits and spurts I'm trying to stay in my lane but still do the job. Just trying to "work smarter, not harder." Like the last PPT I did. I just copy and pasted vs spending tons of time recreating verbiage or doing fancy formatting or even adding video. 

And for another deck, I was going to create the laborious patient journey, but when I checked in with my manager she was fine to use a deck we already had. Yasss!

So, little wins.