Rejected Personally and Professionally and 6 Years as a Working Woman

It's Sunday! And tomorrow is a holiday!

I spent the last hour or so on the Ask  A Manager site. Honestly, after 2 weeks of abstaining from Old Boss Stuff, I was on the mend.

But the chat messages just re-ignited the feelings. Part of me does hope I NEVER HEAR FROM HER AGAIN.

But as I was reading the archives on that site, I felt both justified and wrong at the same time.

Things I did wrong

- Wanting her to cook for me

- Wanting to be her really close friend (but she has those at work!)

- Wanting to travel with her (yes, I sent her a link for a groupon trip to Ireland)

- Wanting her to visit me

I think she probably thought I was joking, but I was being 100% serious. But I guess you can't do those things with your boss. I've seen it done before, but I guess you're not supposed to. I can't confirm she's done those things with her "work family," but she certainly didn't want to do them with me.

So in my inappropriate demands, I ultimately felt rejected by her personally. Like - why don't you like me? Why don't you like me as much as I like you? Why don't you like me as much as everyone else? Why don't you like me as much as Old Buddy!

And the professionally, when I could never get her to call me her Top Performer or anything of the sort or do anything above and beyond to keep me (i.e. salary increase or better bonus score), I felt rejected professionally.

Even yesterday when I hated the thought of her and hated I ever knew her, today I'm back to why don't you like me? 

Yesterday I was confident in my decision to leave and to not engage in the chat messages, today I'm back to still wanting some sort of chat to salvage whatever relationship I thought we had. 

I know logically it's a case of a really friendly woman who was maybe intrigued by a new shiny toy AT FIRST, but in the end she wasn't that into me.  It just sucks emotionally.

It sucks because there's nothing I can do about it. And I know logically having the conversation is magical thinking in my mind. I can't make her like me, but I still want it. I still want her to like me. I still want to be her friend.

And honestly, in this moment, I think she could convince me to come back just to be near her and interact with her again. Yeah, sad but true. 

At this point, tears are streaming down my face as I type this.

I already know trying to rekindle friendships after a "friend" has done this to me in the past has not worked out, but I still want it. I just want the delusion back. 

I like being under her wing. I felt protected there - until I wasn't.  Just a morsel of her attention after 100 hours of work had been enough at some point. 

Just a text, a message to know that someone was thinking about me. Just any sort of special attention. 

I know I'm mourning a delusion, but I can't make my brain stop. I know there wasn't a true friendship there so there's nothing really to hope for in the future, but somehow I still feel mournful. 

I'm still replaying conversations and interactions in my mind and romanticizing them as better than they were. 

Other things you can't say when you're trying to get over a break-up from your Old Boss

- Please forget you ever knew me. 

- Please don't message me if it's not business critical.

- I'm trying to get over you, so please don't message me anymore.

her: what do you mean?

 me: I felt rejected by you personally when you declined to maintain a friendship and professionally when you didn't ask me to stay or trying to keep me. So messages like these while normally innocuous are quite triggering and distressing to me. (for added measure: I hope you can can understand. or like the celebrities: please respect my privacy at this time)

OR

me: I know you mean well, but it hurts to get messages like these from you because I obviously still miss and love you and you don't. Do you? 

Also

Congratulations to me! I survived 6 years in the workplace! It seems both long and short compared to the 30 years we were all promised. I started my (3rd?) career after Labor Day 2015.

It's bittersweet. 

I've been a working woman for  6 years. I certainly don't spend enough time patting myself on the back. Bad things always happen to me when I spend too much time complimenting myself. Watch - in the next few weeks something terrible is going to happen.

Oh wait, it already has! 

Anyway, yep after toiling away at professional school for 4 years, my prize was more work!! I was creeping the people on my current team, and it's always so suprising when people started working the decade I was born. Part of me wonders what their bank accounts look like?? Part of me wonders, wow! I did notice for a lot of the older generations, at the max, this is their 3rd company in the last 30 or 40 years. This my 3rd company in 6 years and 2nd company in 1.

There's definitely a paradigm shift for sure. I think people found a spot and just stayed. It's only now that our generation is looking for things like work balance and other accoutrements in the workplace. We are a greedy and needy generation by comparison. I wonder if we're anymore satisfied. I would wager not. For someone like me, there is some ...satisfaction ...doesn't seem like the right word... there is a measure of stability in just having a job that funds your life. It's like a marriage, you just decide to work through as long as it meets your financial "needs." 

Honestly, if not for FIRE, I'd probably still be at Call Center #1 or even Call Center #2. All were quite tolerable. And for the most part a pretty good gig in retrospect. It's only when I started feeling like I should be doing more or making more, that the angst to leave settled in.  I think it was really Call Center #3 that the actual work started to make me want to leave. But I think if Call Center #3 had been my first job, I would not have known it didn't need to be that way. 

I think it's just how you position a job in your life. Is it just a necessary anchor to pay bills and you carve your life around it. I think that's most people until something really goes wrong. I think that's most relationships probably.

I think when people left Call Center #1, it would always make me question what I was still doing there. I always went down to the 80/20 argument. It was meeting 80% of what I thought my needs were - steady income, manageable, clear expectations, predictable. I felt comforted by the fact that it was mostly the "rest home" for burned out people in my profession. I was glad I didn't take the crooked path to get there - i.e. the burn out route. 

It was okay to not want more. I had settled into my mediocre life. Let's be honest, I was still feeling strong feelings that I was stuck and wondering if this was all there is. So while I'm beating myself up for ruining what was a stable thing, I did want to see what else was out there.

There was definitely more money but at what cost? 

What is the opportunity cost of leaving vs staying at Call Center #1.

I think before I'd calculated a net difference of about 10k in salary after all the things. 

I'd still be alone. Mathematically, I'd still be closer to FIRE. I think the market gains are confusing me vs how much I've actually contributed. 

If I had stayed at Call Center #1

I would not have had this year of turmoil. 

But would I have had a year of feeling ungrateful and stuck?

I would still be working from home b/c of COVID

I'd be in my nicer neighborhood

(I have just as many bugs in this place as the last place, so no net gain there.)

In this moment, I'm having a hard time seeing what the net gain of working at Call Center #3 was other than some temporary emotional triumph. 

I was getting a bit more anxious with phone calls, so that's a bit of an unknown but who know what a vacation might have fixed. 

I think in this moment knowing how little time I have left and knowing that nothing really happens after a big salary and cool title, I don't know if the job hop was worth it.

$20k seems like a lot of money, and it is but the impact to my emotional state vs the impact to my net worth WAS NOT WORTH IT. 

Whether I look at the actual $10k I got or the 20k it's only a small percentage of my total assets at this time. While this job affected 100% of my life. 

In this case the Devil You Don't Know was a bigger devil. 

I mean if you look back at my posts from when I was working at Call Center #1, I had reached a resigned place at the very least. But I had such minimal success building a social life that I thought I would have greater control on professional life. Wrong. 

I fantasized about escaping work but I think it was just "work" not that job itself. 

I don't know... I'm just rambling at this point. I was looking for a change. I made it and I regret it. 

There's just not enough stories out there about that in my opinion and I know that's something I've said before.

It DOES hurt to ask (when it comes to salary increases).

The WORST they can say is NO belies the whole picture.

JOB hunting is SOUL-CRUSHING (so if you're not coming from a soul-crushed place, beware!)

I think I just over-committed to FIRE a bit because it was so goal and task-oriented. 

Saturday Night Check-In: Highly Sensitive People, Dreams, and Meat

 It's about 9p. I'm watching 90 Days: The Single Life. 

I'm still trying to figure out computer time on the weekends especially with my lighter workload (i.e. just business hours for now). 

Today was okay. I blogged in the morning and it was okay. And now I'm blogging in the evening. 

The biggest thing I'm trying to figure out is navigating this new stage of my life. 

Because I don't really have anyone to talk to about my lingering feelings about Old Job, I've been reading the site Ask A Manager, and it's a good distraction for the most part. 

I think for the most part I handled it well - at least my exit. I'm so glad I didn't budge on my start date. I had been pushed to the edge.

In my healing, I'm trying to work on self-soothing. 

One of the things I stumbled upon today was a site about Highly Sensitive People. I used to half-jokingly call myself spectrum-adjacent because I know there's something different about me than other people, but now I think Highly Sensitive might be a better fit for what it's like to be me. 

I don't have a cohesive thought for this post, but I just wanted to try to structure my weekend days a little. 

Today I cried a little about Old Job. Just a little though. Like maybe a handful of tears. I had some conversations out loud with things I wanted to say. Luckily I don't remember much. 

I think it's hard to know if we were ever friends and things changed (if so when?) or if we were NEVER friends (does it even matter?).  Or is this normal. At this point it really has been my normal. People are fluid and their feelings and attitudes toward you change without you knowing and you never get an explanation. That's how it's been for me in adulthood and it's incredibly frustrating. 

This was a hoped for new start but it's very much like the last 20 years of my life. 

So it makes it easier just to focus on FIRE, but I can't put any more eggs in the FIRE basket. At this point, I'm thinking of disconnecting from my countdown and budget checks until the end of the year. 

I really want to spend more time with myself even if all I do is just lay there. The weather is cooling down. 

Around 3 or 4p I finally decided to make some corn and go get some smoked meat. I get to the smoked meat place, and they decided to close early. No smoked meat. I didn't panic. I looked nearby for an alternative and when I didn't find anything I quietly drove home.

A little before 8p, I got a taste for some meat that the shaved meat at Food Lion could satisfy. I don't usually like being out after dark, but with a little bit of daylight left, I hurried to the store and back. Yeah, I really need to stay in after dark in this area. But I'm always glad that I have budgeted for my level of food buying - it's usually such an easy way to get a small win for me and a little happiness.

Another worm made it in. I saw one heading toward the door from outside but forgot to notice how exactly it made it through the door and then it was in. I'm not convinced it came in through the seal in the door but can't figure out where else it would've come from. 

My next social goal is to put at least 30 days between phone conversations between the two people I still talk to on the phone.

One of the things that I read on the Highly Sensitive People site was a need to seek advice from people who actually hear you. That's been a complaint I've vocalized to and about these last two people standing. 

So there are 3 People in my life right now I need to shake from any sort of regular contact

- Frenemy Co-Worker

- Maryland Aunty

- And the OverAchiever (this is minor and can be easily done. but a part of me does want to get my title updated in our system and then share it with someone pettily. I will probably do this if it ever happens and I think that's the only time I'll ever need to chat with her. This is why I'd rather this happen sooner than later.)

Dreams

So I looked up some information about some dreams I've been having. They are related to gun violence. The internet basically said the dreams I was having could be interpreted as having to do with conflict in my life, being frustrated by unsaid things and that I may need to watch my back in my personal and professional life, and it may be related to a rejection of some kind. 

All of these things felt very true. The watching my back resonated the most as it's a feeling I've been having lately. There's a heightened level of distrust with Frenemy Co-Worker because she's trying so hard to produce this narrative that career advancement is not on her list but her comments are mismatched with each other and don't match her actions. These are subtle differences and a lot of white lies that I don't think she's realizing she's saying. 

Recognizing subtleties they said is also a characteristic of Highly Sensitive People. It's why I constantly feel lied to or misled. 

Another reason I want to take a break from Frenemy Coworker. I'm already dealing with the lies of last year, I don't need another thing to process. 

It's tricky for me though because I would've been over Last Year by now if I had more going on in my life to distract me, but I don't. So this healing is going to take much longer than it needs to. And now I'm constantly on guard about what to say if Old Boss ever contacts me again.  I think if she doesn't say anything on our near our half-birthday, I should be good for the rest of the year. And hopefully by then I'll have more going on with my life.

Oh speaking of my life. I'm not sure whether to try to get 2 or 3 more therapy sessions in with a new therapist to spend down my FSA or to try to get a massager. 

I think I'll just have to let the AD thing go. They already won. 

Saturday Morning Ruminations (and Affirmations)

So I've been vacillating between denying myself computer time or just going along with my habit of interacting with my computer every day. 

Today I just decided to log-on instead of having this internal battle of wills to act like I don't want to be incessantly checking emails. Old habits die hard.

In a self-destructive mood, I checked our internal postings to see if my job had been posted for. Remember how I freaked out about 2 or 3 weeks ago when I saw that on the calendar invite. It was the confirmation I needed that I was THAT replaceable. It was the deepest of daggers.

Then Secret Love in me was like oh maybe it's for one of the other managers. Maybe they'll still ask me back. Like, what the heck.

So today I looked for the role again. It was posted about a week after that calendar invite I saw. 

And it's actually posted as a level down. It was actually something I thought all along they should do. And past events meant this was such a harbinger of things to come. 

- When I first started, a colleague kept acting "confused" and saying things like do you report to Old Buddy or Old Manager. After a couple of the same interactions, I either would just let it hang in the air like a rhetorical question or just act just as confused.

- But this puts a lot of things into perspective

- I'd always questioned whether my efforts and contributions were that valuable since I never got the affirmation I was looking for (Spoiler: they weren't!)

- I'd noticed  a shift in the quantity of positive feedback I was getting

- I'd noticed a shift overall in my interaction with my boss, almost as though she was distancing herself. I'd convinced myself it was a reaction to me trying to distance myself (man! my trusty gut is so good about these things!)

- It affirms my fear that Old Buddy did think she needed to manage me in some ways (remember: the "development opportunity" during a presentation she thought she was creating for me)

- They were just using me to do their grunt work

- I was never going to get promoted

- I was never going to get a raise

- Old Buddy is definitely going to be promoted to AD soon, especially once she has 3 direct reports

- They are STILL the dynamic duo riding away in the sunset (I remember getting the visual confirmation I needed once people started returning to work)

- Her work performance was never going to get criticized or critiqued

- The sun really does shine on her butt crack

- I did however outmaneuver Old Boss (I think that's part of the sting on both parts... she was trying to play me)

- THEY'RE NEVER GOING TO ASK ME BACK AND IT REALLY WAS A GOOD RIDDANCE!

- Why all her lies in the Q2 meeting didn't make sense; affirms that yes if I were Old Buddy, I surely would've gotten a raise; if I were Old Buddy, she would've gone to bat for me without raising an eyebrow; and honestly I don't think she needed to go to bat or ask anyone, if it were Old Buddy she'd be making whatever she wanted;  which again confirms that Old Buddy WAS making more than me

- I DO FEEL LESS Pressure to want to maintain this 'friendship" because honestly I still have nights where I replay many parts of the last year up to and including my last weeks. BUT HELLO, DUMMY, WE WERE NEVER FRIENDS. LIKE WHAT ELSE NEEDS TO HAPPEN. 

So ultimately, I don't know how much reassurance I needed that I did the right thing. Maybe one day I'll believe it. I wasn't wanted here. That hurts. I was never going to be the star pupil. That hurts. I was never going to best Old Buddy. That really hurts. 

I will give it to Old Buddy, she is quite good at delegating work and not doing much of it herself. Maybe that's a good manager. Definitely a good corporate world person. Oh, that's probably why she and the Dinosuar don't get along. The Dinosaur has mastered staying power in the Corporate World. I guess that's my poetic justice or at least as good as it's going to get. 

Old Manager was right - she trusts Old Buddy with her business and that has not waivered. 

I feel like Old Buddy is going to get rewarded just for staying. Since I remember Old Buddy saying that's how she got hired was by Old Manager boosting her up to Grand Boss. So in the world of corporate white lies, this will be easy to to do.

It confirms (for the millionth time) that Old Manager never went to bat for me. Again with the circuitous lies in Q2 meeting. Reality sucks. I just didn't want to believe it entirely. This woman was not that into me. She was too good. I see how people get duped on all these reality and dating and "American Greed" type shows. I'm no better. Just another dumb human. 

I came out the victor here, but why do I still feel like a loser?

I wonder if Old Buddy knew this all along?

So yeah, praise the Lord! I'm definitely glad I didn't say she hurt my feelings. THANK you Brain!!! It was all white lies. I can't keep up. 

I feel really happy then with all my outbursts and sharing my concerns with colleagues then.

No love lost here, my friend.

OMG, I'm so glad I read the context clues correctly. She never loved me. It was always them. 

Gosh, I'm so curious what was the plan here? 

I will say now I DEFINITELY want my title changed to reflect my AD role. I at least want my moment of glory even if I'm the only one living it. I will work on that next week. 

Now I do kind of wish I had waited to respond. Stupid New Manager. Stop slowing me down. 

I don't know though because I do like to symbolically date things - I wanted to leave all the Old Boss Drama in August as much as I could. 

I think the best I can hope for is for my title to change sooner rather than later (and HOPEFULLY before Old Buddy - again this same mental game I've only been playing with myself), and if nothing else I can also change it on my internal resume in case they ever snoop. Spoiler: that girl has always had the golden ticket so she doesn't give 2 Fs about me.

This is the part that I'm bewildered about - was there like a secret handshake? I think there's only been one time where my boss slightly seemed to prefer me over Old Buddy and that was during the hellacious 5-week training session I led. Other than that, even when Old Buddy was sick for 3 months, she accidentally messaged me some lamentations that Old Buddy wasn't there. And I remember thinking like -what exactly did she think we were missing? 

At the end of it, I'm just jealous. No one in the workplace has ever had my back like that. No one outside of the workplace except maybe my aunty. 

And literally it's all the same, I spend so much time thinking of how could I have made this turn out differently. Why am I so easily discarded?

I'm so glad I didn't take my Dumb Aunt's advice about asking her about her family. I would've been sucked right back in. SO GLAD. 

I think the part that still gets me is why are you acting mad?!

In dream world,

I should still let her know I made AD and then suggest, I think when you guys rehire it should be just like a program specialist (vs manager) or another role like Mediocre White Man's role that just reports to Old Buddy. She is def better at delegating work than performing work. ..

ooo...OR...She manages her workload well by delegating and socializing work (this is corporate speak for not doing your work but casting the blame a little bit on everyone) better than anyone I know. 

Genius. There's nothing like a good mental comeback to soothe my anxious thoughts and hurt feelings. 

Mind you, not once has it ever happened. But the planning of it is so sweet!

Friday Check-In

 It's a little after 4p on Friday and I'm feeling happy! Reason - I'm hopped up on Tahitian Fruit Punch and McDs and fries.

I think after this last bag I'm going to cool down on the fries for a little while. 

I actually have enough food in the house to not buy anything for awhile. Since COVID and moving I haven't been as successful with cleaning out the freezer and pantries as in previous years. I think I just have more pantry space. So while a part of me wants to do that now, I won't even make that a serious goal.

I really need more descriptive words for my goals - I've heard soft goal, reach goal, target goal, stretch goal, but none of them really fit my situation. I have a lot of secret goals. You know the ones you don't dare say out loud lest they don't come true.

Still on the waning front of outside contacts.

The Thing I did

After wanting to and then not wanting to, I deliberately told the OverAchiever some of my complaints from Old Job. I had to air it out. I was feeling mean-spirited this morning.  I am proud of myself that I was able to keep it to just 3 main bullets.

Then I said I felt bad and deleted it. 

I have to say it didn't feel bad.

But naturally, now I think something bad is going to happen to me. Work is going to get crazy. I'm going to be super lost and all the doomsday things will happen. I am not bad to the bone.

I think I could enjoy this life if I could just find more things to occupy my time. 

I'm still working through how much I spiral after unanswered text messages and email, but I do think it's mostly a me issue.  Although I think it's a bit of a power move on the sender's part, I like to downplay it by responding to their silence anyway - just act dumb...like I'm mentally slapping your power move away. 

Investment Choices

One of the good-to-great things that have been on my mind is to simplify my mutual funds. When I first started working, I think I just picked a target date fund because I didn't know what else to do. It was the easy choice. When I first started tracking my spending and thus my assets, I noticed that the Target Date Fund just had these amazing returns. 

So as I became for active and aggressively saving I've opened up several more brokerage accounts and kept going for the target date fund. It was easy and really all I knew as a novice investor. I figured my "diversification" was with the robo advisor. Then when I reached another level of madness...must've been end of last year... I finally swung for the hills. I started funneling new money into the much lauded VTSAX on advice of my favorite bloggers.

It felt so risky.

Then Fidelity opened their own stock market index fund with zero expense ratio. So I tried my hand at that. In the same account it didn't seem to be doing as well as the target date fund so I started to doubt myself and moved more money into the target date fund.

Now the the index funds are doing really well and it's making me want to just clean up my strategy. I still have some loyalty to the target date fund because at the end of the day, it's a strong horse in the race. 

I think I forgot to remember that the index fund is not like investing in a particular stock. I think because one of my favorite bloggers always just stays she has 100% stock portfolio, I just got it in my mind that I'm investing in stocks and individual stocks are bad.  

But the more I've been watching my numbers and paying attention to share prices, I think the more comfortable I feel. It's still just a fund like the mutual fund, at least in my mind. I am very much a novice and a lot of this for me is a mental game. 

That being said I immediately wanted to just pull the trigger and push all my taxable brokerage money into VTSAX and its Fidelity counterpart. But then I  thought waaait...  I would lose the potential benefits from my current target date funds because I bought them at a lower price than what I would pay for new index funds today. 

So I think I'm going to ride out what my allocations are now until the end of the year. The stock market obviously doesn't care about the date Dec 31, 2021, but to me it's like starting new. I feel like I'm banking any last potential gains for this year and then can start fresh with the new prices next year.

Remember, in my mind I'm in some sort of Cruise Control to FIRE. And this next quarter is just me trying to aggressively save to reach my next FIRE number.  Now, remember I haven't actually reached my original FIRE number, but I think to help withstand all my feelings, I decided that wherever I am when I've had enough will be my FIRE number. The pressure was getting to be too much and there were too many feelings. Let's not dwell.

The point is, after going back and forth and looking at my numbers, I feel more settled with just continuing with my allocations as is. Then at the turn of the new year, just put the new set-it-and-forget it strategy into play. 

So for now:

- Still continuing with the 3 brokers

- Still keeping all my target date funds

- Still pumping new money into stock market index funds

Other than, I'm about to log-off. I did some bank bonus errands today and have some actual real life errands to do next week when everyone is off holiday brain. Namely, I have to figure out my mortgage stuff.  Toodles!

2 Bad Dreams and A Bad Attitude

 Last night I fell into sugar coma after 2 bowls of Lucky Charms. Woke up around 2 or 3am. Then I watched most of 3 episodes of Only Murders in the Building. It was colorful enough for a crime story that I thought I could handle it at that late hour.

There was one scary scene but other than that it was fine.

I say that because I wonder if that's why I had 2 separate dreams in the same night of being murdered.

The dream returned again of being caught in gunfire, but somehow safe and scared. 

I don't know if it's indicative of my current state of affairs or something to come. 

The other one, I don't remember exactly but I think again there was some sort of gunfire but this time I was crouching in a corner and the bad guy found me. I could smell their "perfume." I remember thinking "perfume" (not cologne) which would make me think it's was a woman but it was a masked "man."

So I don't know what that's about. And I feel like this is the second time I've smelled a smell in my dreams. That is also strange. 

I was a bit short with my brother just now, but I don't feel that bad about it. I'm just tired of nonsense relationships. And you know I'm half on a crusade to say and do what I feel.

That was actually an unwritten post from yesterday. My default goal is to really stop speaking to...or at the very least stop proactively reaching out to people. 

I know around the holidays will be hard so I will probably relapse, but I have to start conditioning myself for FIRE. I mean default goal is to FIRE on whatever number I am when I can't take it anymore and I just want to make it to the end of this year. So, there's that. 

But on that same note, I think I kind of want to do whatever I want. I'm half like...well it won't matter anyway...I'm so far away from where I was destined to be...and my memory is not as good as it used to be. I forget more things than I thought. 

Yesterday

Yesterday was actually a good day. I met with my mentor and she was colorful as always but comforting near the end. She was showing me an example of a poorly written module and when I expressed concern about my first project being like that, she said, I WOULD NEVER LET THAT HAPPEN. 

Because beggars can't be choosers, I'm rounding her up to an ally. I've been wanting one of those.

I spoke to one of my frenemies, and I realized I had prime opportunity to interrupt her a couple times like she does me when she has to tend to her babies. Being rude just doesn't come naturally to me. 

I kind of want some cornbread.

I just sent a Teams Message to the other OverAchiever and apparently she's away. She doesn't have an OOO message so I thought it was someone else's calendar invite making her appear away. Oh well, somehow that hurt my feelings. 

See what I mean. I'm all over the place so trying to set these strict boundaries on social contact... I'm just not in a place to be that successful with them. I'll just blame COVID.

My brother is saying my mom hasn't been feeling well. I honestly didn't think she'd last a year after my dad died last November. It's been about 10 months, so we'll see. 

I don't think I know how to be a human.