Life changes

How quickly things change. You can see the ideas percolate in the thoughts below. Greg and I have decided to sell most of our possessions and travel though the states for a couple years. Getting from this point to the day we leave will be interesting! Today has been a hard day all round. I posted this to my journal group:


I've always been a person that excells at everything I do. I loved school as a child and, though I didn't get straight A's all the time, the expectation that I would go to college, get a good job in my career field and do well for myself was always there--both internally for me and from my family and friends.

And I did--go to college, get a good job. I've done well.

The last couple of years have been a little tramatic and stressful. Some of you know some of the story. The short version--my sister died, I got pregnant and had a baby, my uncle died, my company that I had been with for 3 years were total asses when I returned to work and I had to find a new job, my new job is a longer comumute and is in a slightly different field from what I've worked in for the last nine years. During this time I've been everywhere emotionally from on top of the world to so depressed my doctor wanted me on medication.

My husband and I have made a major decision over the last couple weeks to sell our home and most of our possessions and travel for a couple years. I am so excited and scared at the same time. Travelling the US is something that I've always wanted to do and the idea of "simplification" is something that has been drawing me for years. So much hard work lies ahead, but I am looking foward to it. At the same time, I am scared about leaving my career behind and starting "over" at the other side of this adventure.

One of the things I'm struggling with today is the fact that I've made this huge decision and am moving forward with that, but I have this job with a small company that I'll be leaving too. I'm a pretty integral part of the company--not that they can't survive without me, nothing that dramatic--but just the everyday moving forward as a manager that sometimes conflicts with what I know is happening in my life. Part of what makes this decision easy is that I see my daughter so little--I am sometimes gone 9 1/2-10 hrs a day. The owner of the company has this grand scheme of starting new offices--and I was starting a new divsion for him. Now there is such a conflict between me continuing to give my all and function well for the company--and knowing I'm leaving. Obviously, as this moves forward, I'll just have to be honest with them before they spend money on things for my "division" that won't function when I'm gone (I'm the only one in the company with senior level skills in that field--the others are all junior associates).

And of course, today is the day that my manager sat me down to do an imprompto evaluation of me so far--and two huge things--the perception from other staff that I'm not here enough hours and that I'm not approachable enough for assistance. I took it well--I normally just freak out about any criticism this "momentous" and just cry. It made it easier that in the back of my head I knew that this just wasn't important in the vast scheme of things--I mean, come on, I won't even be here in 6 months to a year! But inside I am also feeling hurt/confused/frustrated/ guilty. Hurt, because these comments are coming from multiple staff and I thought things were going well with them. Confused between the feelings of frustration and guilt--a huge part of me knows that most of the comments stem from a cluster of out-of-my-control circumstances--I'm coming into a company as a manager when they had a manager that they loved and worked well with--I'm jumping inot the middle of the heirarchy--the normal "us" vs. "them" dynamic between associates and seniors--I'm in a new field and can't just whip out documents like I can with biology and have to rely a lot more on their experience too. But then, when you hear criticism from multiple sources, you would be stupid to not really listen and evaluate how much truth is in there. And the thing is--I've just never had to deal with not being "perfect"--not in a real perfection sense--but in the sense that I've always just fit in with school and work and done my job well and not had much conflict--and have been perceived as doing a wonderful job.

In one year, I've been demoted and told I wasn't functioning as a manager and now, given the opportunity to work with a new group of people, I'm still not being perceived as doing my best. And the thing is--I don't want to work 10 hour days to convince folks that I'm doing 110%--I want to put in my hours and more on the days I need to, but not all the time. I want to be home with my husband and Phoebe. And I'm taking hte steps in my life to get someplace else, to get off this sometimes ridiculous work force drama, but I have to keep going here. And I've kicked it up considerably since leaving my old job--I put in more hours, have tried harder than I've needed to in years--and it still isn't working.

My manager is totally good about the whole thing--she doesn't think these are huge problems--she thinks they are more perception problems than reality. Great--I have to convince people I'm doing my job properly and am competant that don't have any vested interest in having a good opinion of me. The fricken personel issues with S seem easy compared to this--at least my issues with her are on the table and being resolved [yes, but how much has her bitching to the other staff contributed to this?]

I just want to sit down and have a good cry. I have to give up all my animals to make this move and it is so hard. I think I just need to let this just lie a bit and not think about it to distance myself from the immediacy of the hurt emotions and move forward constructively.

I can't even let myself think about it to much as it just makes me so angry. Right now I'm taking a break and two of the associates have been talking for 20 minutes about marriage couselling. Do they factor those convos in their thoughts about their own work habits? I just can't let myself think along those lines. I can only control my own integrity and my own actions.

The entire thing just confirms how right it is that Greg and I make this move. The details are always the hard thing. Some moments I panic thinking that perhaps this idea of leaving it all is just an elaborate mental escape--thinking that just doing this will somehow magically make us happier. But I KNOW that you can't just run away from things and be magically happy--we are doing this because we believe in our hearts that the way we are living now is really killing us spiritually.

We are so blessed in that we lucked into buying our house right before a huge increase in the market. It isn't like we can retire or anything, but we sure can live frugally for awhile and have money at the end.

  ¶ 5:22 PM