It's been a while since I've posted anything new. Over a year, in fact. That's shitty. I thought it'd be a good idea to make a journal post about it and share some good news.
The TL;DR of it is that work got really crazy last year for me and stayed crazy, to the point where I didn't have time or energy to do much else for a long time. I finally quit my old job and started a new one a few weeks ago, and I'm hopeful that this will allow me to get back into writing at the level I'd like to, both here and on other projects.
Longer story/vent, for anyone who cares:
It kind of started to go south for me at my last job around the time COVID became a thing in the spring and early summer of last year, though it really wasn't related to coronavirus.
I was on a team of 3 people and we more or less shared the workload equally between ourselves. Around April or May of 2020 one of my coworkers left for a different company, and another got promoted to a new role internally. Within the span of a couple months I'd transitioned to doing the work of 3 people.
I thought this would be temporary. Yeah it'd suck for a few months while we found new people to fill the roles, but after that it'd be back to normal, right?
Nope. They just didn't hire anyone to fill those roles.
I was able to do the work, and was able to keep it together for a long time. I actually got promoted in October of last year (which was kind of shocking to me at the time) and I thought that would let me transition into other things and shift some of my former duties to analysts in other regions of the country. But instead shit just getting piled on and on and on.
It really is true, what they say about the frog. If you throw him in the pot of boiling water he'll jump out, but if you slowly increase the temperature he'll boil alive without ever realizing it.
By March of this year I was regularly working 80 hour weeks. I took a week off near the end of the month, it would have been the first time I'd taken off work since being promoted. But I realized at some point it would actually be my first DAYS off since then, too. I'd worked every weekend, Saturday and Sunday. I worked on Thanksgiving. I worked on Christmas. Looking back I realized there wasn't a single day over 6 months that I hadn't worked.
The week off came, but shit ran over and I ended up having to work on the first Saturday, too. And Sunday. On Monday I slept in, but I got a text from another coworker telling me that there was something that absolutely had to get done that day that I was supposed to do that had fallen off my radar.
I stealth worked. On my week off I stealth worked. I was disconnected from Microsoft Teams, my out of office was up on Outlook, but I was working. Even working 80 hours a week I was so far behind on a dozen different things that I felt like I needed this time to catch up.
The breaking point came in May of this year. I remember specifically, May 10th.
After I got promoted my boss expected me to start -- and I shit you not -- performing duties for the role above mine.
Without getting into too much detail about the job or my work, it's not as crazy as it sounds. Since I stopped working as a writer I've been working in finance, and in the particular field I'm in when you get hired on as an analyst the expectation is that you'll do it for a few years, gain experience, and then start working at the higher level role with the title 'Senior Analyst' for a while before actually getting promoted to the real higher role.
I'd been promoted to Sr. Analyst, but I was still saddled with the grunt work of three analysts, so I really didn't have time to do the next-level shit. I've never been in a job before where I felt I had no good options and every path led to failure. Have you? It's cliche to say, but it's soul-crushing. You're working like a slave and still made to feel like you're a screw-up who can't get his shit together.
So yeah, May 10th. I'd gotten a really bad performance review for the past year (2 out of 5) and one of my bosses had scheduled these remedial strategy sessions first thing in the morning every Monday. This one went particularly bad, with him specifically saying 'maybe (specific industry and job role) isn't right for you,' which is corporate speak for 'your head's on the chopping block.' I mulled that over for about half an hour before I got a call from another one of my managers, basically berating me for something that was sub-par that I'd worked on all weekend.
I think it was about noon on the 10th when I decided to leave. Really decided, I mean. You know you think about it often when you're in a shitty situation like that, but I really made the choice to leave then.
I started looking for other jobs, had a few interviews. Everything's over Zoom now, which helped a lot since I didn't have to take time off for interviews. Again, without getting too specific, the role within the industry I was in is pretty high demand, and I actually turned down two offers before I accepted one. The timing was perfect too, since the day before I gave my direct manager my two-week's notice he has scheduled a meeting for the following Monday titled 'PIP,' and someone from HR was on the meeting invite. PIP stands for 'performance improvement plan,' and it's basically what happens when they are trying to set the ball rolling to fire you. So yeah, perfect timing.
Anyway, I took a couple weeks off (real weeks off) at the beginning of August before I started my new job. I went on a 3 day hike, I went kayaking, I did nothing for a few days. It was great.
I started my new job about 3 weeks ago. So far it's going good. I know things went to shit at my last job, and I can lay blame at other people, but I have to acknowledge that part of it was the fact that I never said 'No' when new work came in. There's only so much one person can do, and I let it get to an untenable point. It shouldn't have happened, but I also shouldn't have let it happen.
So at this job I'm going to make a more conscious effort to draw boundaries. Actual 40 hour weeks more often than not, turning down projects when I don't have capacity, prioritizing my well-being.
ANYWAY, all that to say that my writing output has been non-existant for a long time, but I should be able to devote more time to it now!
