Everyday Stranger

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

A funny thing has been happening to me since I have moved to England.

I started working when I was 14. I worked in a horrible amusement park in Arlington, Texas called Six Flags. Now, Texas summers are extreme and horrible, and if you add the gigantic misery that is an amusement park, it only gets worse. It's frayed tempers, exasperated parents, ice-cream sticky children with heat tempers and empty wallets.

I got the hell out of there, and became a lifeguard at a water park that used to be called Wet and Wild (thank God they changed the name, else I can't imagine how many firewalls would prevent a Dad from booking his family vacation). From there, I worked my way through high school and college as a waitress, a hostess, an archivist with the Texas Rangers, an archeology lab manager, a typist at the college, and finally working in a bookstore.

It was the bookstore part where I started to set the precedent. I joined in as a simple book seller in a regional chain in Texas that no longer exists, and I loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. It was like the mother ship calling me home-not only did I get to work with books, I got to help people with them. And it was there, in my university years, that I started to feel a drive. I worked constantly, and moved up the management ladder in the meantime. I was given a lot of responsibility. A lot of decision-making power.

When I graduated I joined a stock-broking firm and worked very hard. From there, I jumped ship and joined Company X doing telecommunications (building duct-taped hamsters, that is) in the US, and it was all downhill from there.

I became obsessed.

Working 7 days a week became the norm for me. No morning was too early, no evening was too late, no business trip was too far-fetched. I was travelling roughly two to three weeks out of every month. Working holidays, working weekends, not taking vacation. I was obsessed.

I got worse when I moved to Sweden. In the beginning, I met Mr. Y when I took over a job that he left behind-he had been doing it for two years and yearned for something new, and I yearned to have a job like his-structured, clear-cut, and full of responsibility. I took the job, and it became a problem between us (which is no longer an issue)-he thought I had a big head about the job, and I felt he wasn't supportive. Looking back, maybe it was a combination-although I didn't have a big head because I thought I was so important, I maybe came across that way since I needed to be in control so badly.

I went overboard. I logged in and read and answered mails late into the evening. I had to be a part of every meeting that touched my hamster product, or even possibly touched it. If I didn't know an answer, I would wing it and make something up-I just couldn't be seen as not understanding everything about my little rodent babies. I would attend meetings simply because I thought that people may be deciding things about my hamsters if I wasn't there. Even on holiday, I couldn't jack out and chill.

Early on, my job became who I was. A career was proof that I had made it, that I was independent, that no one could control me and no one could make me rely on them. I'm Every Woman, that kind of shit.

And then last year I lost my job, and it was a free-fall. I fell to the earth with a feebleness that comes only from having your wings clipped, and my redundancy punched a hole in myself that remains, to this day, unfilled. They let me go! My mind screamed. Look at all I did for them, all I gave to them! How could they do this?

And now I have a beautiful and wonderful job in a company that is the definition of stability. I work with nice people and in an area that I am comfortable with. I have a job that is rather central, and with people and faces I know and am comfortable with.

But I have changed.

I don't feel the need to work 7 days a week. I don't work 10 hours a day, even. If I don't know the answer to something, then I say I don't know, I'll get back to you. I don't have to be a part of every meeting, I don't have to know it all. I have been beginning to relax and be ok with not knowing and not controlling every single aspect.

But now there is a smell of danger. A group of consultants that I have crossed paths with back in Company X that have been brought into Dream Job. They are dangerous, they are Machiavellian, and they are useless. They build spectacular management organizations that cripple progress and spend their time rubbing elbows with upper management. And now they are threatening to usurp the gerbil work I am doing...and I am not going to fight them about it.

The hole that got punched in me from losing my job is still there. It's as though, if I work too hard, the rest of the bits of me will get washed out, shoved out, and I will bleed from the inside out. I am hesitant. I am calm. I am terrified of being hurt again, and losing my job.

I sent a mail to my managers about this usurping. I talked to them about my issues. But I will just keep plodding away at my gerbil product, I will keep going at the work I have started, the contacts that I have made. I won't draw swords over this. I have to try to figure out who I am at work now, and it doesn't help to do handbags at twenty paces over it.

This is an enormous and fundamental change for me, and not the first.

What I am trying to ascertain is...is this a good change? And am I changing for the right reasons-because it is healthy? Because I know that a company is a ruthless lover that will just use you and throw you away? Because a career, while important that I like it, does not have to be the biggest love of my life?

Or am I changing because I am afraid?

-H.

PS-I love Jim, always have and always will. And I don't appreciate people so desirous of being a martyr that they don't do their homework, as Jim brings to our attention in this post. Take the nails out of your hands and use them to climb down from the cross, Ma'am.

I HAVE been knocked around. I have been hit, I have been raped, I have been loved, I have been taken care of, I have found passion. I have been married, I have been divorced, I have found God, and I have lost God. I have heard "You drove me to it." and I have heard "I will always love you." I have had a very rough childhood, and an even rougher adulthood.

If you don't read me, you don't have the right to label me a feminazi, of which I am in no way, shape or form that. To me, the term "feminazi" is an amorphous term that is shaped and created by those who are afraid, ignorant, or simply on the defense and looking for sympathy. There's no such thing as a feminazi, not according to me, and not according to my good friend Webster.

This domestic violence debate? It does NOT get to spread onto my site. If, by now, you don't know how I stand on it? I have archives. Check them out.

I am severely disappointed. Really.

Posted by Everydaystranger at May 20, 2004 09:26 AM | TrackBack