fuck this job.com

Ugh. Sigh. Ugh.

I'm not sure if anyone is reading these infrequent blog postings, but damn, they make me feel better. And reading everyone else's helps put my own woes in very clear perspective.

Anyway...work has been sucking a lot, mostly since last Friday. I took yesterday off, kind of a mental health day, although my stomach wasn't feeling wonderful, either.

So, sparing you the gory details, I fucked something up at work. My boss is pissed and she has a right to be - I made a horrible judgment call and am willing to deal with the consequences (though I suppose that goes without saying, otherwise I'd report that I had quit). What bothers me, however, is that when I make such mistakes it sets my boss off into a plague of suspicion and she starts to act as though everything I've ever done has been entirely wrong and am no longer trustworthy regarding anything at all. I certainly earned her wrath, but I'm thinking that the punishment does not quite squarely fit the crime. In the last few days, I've received highly detailed emails about tasks I've been doing well all along - it makes me feel utterly incompetent. There isn't much I can do about this. I'm laying low, working hard and being extra diligent about...everything.

Overall, my morale is low. I'm tired of being a lowly support person because gratitude and respect do not come with it. The people we support are mostly snotty and self-absorbed, my direct cohort are dim and not terribly interesting. For the first time in my life, I have no idea what I'd like my next job to be, but I DO know what kind of job I want. I'm dreaming of something where rather than being a go-fer, I'm a relatively equal part of a team. In this fantasy I work closely with other people, several of whom are my age - imagine! - and we help one another. And as long as this hypothetical company is not plotting genocide or doing work that would harm others, I could not care less about what my dream job actually accomplishes.

But that's just a fantasy. Where I am now is not terrible. My salary is fine, my hours are fine, most of my co-workers are good enough - I guess the grass is always greener somewhere else. Nonetheless, I'm still unhappy. So my latest strategy is in changing my perception of the job. I've never harbored the illusion that this job is anything more than a job. It's not a career and is not where I intend to dwell beyond the next year or two. This makes dealing with the job's downsides easy at times. But it doesn't help with my motivation at all. I've decided that the best way to keep myself motivated it to:

a.) take nothing personally. This is a job, it is not my identity or my career. It is not even a reflection of myself, it is simply a means to an end.

b.) Start thinking about this job as a preparation for my leaving. I want to leave in good standing and hope to pass along an organized job for my successor. This definitely motivates me more than simply doing a good job for the sake of the job itself. I now have an attainable finish line.

Awright, better get back to work - I've a lot do before the day is out.