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My no good very bad winter of 2014

Posted on Sunday, at • bought • 196 views

This past October, I started a new job. I went into it intending to work there a year, maybe 18 months, then get the hell out - having achieved a) longevity and b) another role in my new career direction rather than the old one. I knew the reputation of this company, so I was partially braced for that. (I have a couple of friends who also work there, and others who used to. Each of them has been prescribed antidepressants shortly after starting at this company.) I knew that the commute would not be ideal, but I thought that I'd try different routes to get there and back, see if I could find the one that took the least time (and find the best time to take said route.)

By Thanksgiving, I was already counting down to the day when I could start jobsearching and finding myself more and more exhausted. I tried four different routes to this particular location, and while I could get a decent time going to the job, going home from the job took no less than 90 minutes. By early December I found myself in tears in the shower in the morning, in tears driving home, and when I got home I was too tired to do much more than feed the cats, empty the litter box (though not as often as I would prefer), get into my pyjamas and collapse into bed. While driving home I'd get so infuriated that I had violent fantasies of hurting my cats (who I love a hell of a lot more than I like most people.) I had very little interrest in, let alone energy for, doing anything that would relax me, or that I would enjoy: watching a movie (tried it, fell asleep each time), doing my nails, writing for my site, reading, listening to music. I stopped wearing any makeup to work. I stopped wearing earrings (I have a huge collection, most of it costume jewelry, but I love them.) I stopped communicating with friends. I kept on with the BBAC, but bluntly that was easier: the site was all set up, the participant had directions on how to add her links in my CMS, I had a good chunk of my posts planned and most of the nail posts done already. I'd furiously put together looks over the weekends, so I was almost always a full week ahead. And while I did enjoy coming up with the looks…it felt more and more like a rush job. If I hadn't had content scheduled out in advance, I think that BBAC posts would have been all that I did for December.

Then the team got asked to help out with a project with an absurdly aggressive timeline, with a stakeholder who was not familiar with these types of projects so they could not articulate what they wanted…just when they wanted it by. Thus was our collective Christmas turned into a nightmare of stressing, mad scrambling, and trying to guesstimate what this stakeholder might need, only for said stakeholder to come and shit all over our efforts. (This on a team that's very recently been told that, as part of the latest re-org, we may be broken up or completely eradicated. It's a Bataan Death March work environment, in which the only positive factor is that the paychecks keep coming in.)

My no good very bad winter of 2014

I have members in my extended family who are bipolar, and members in my extended family who are clinically depressed. I had never had clinical depression before, but knew that it could happen to me with the right triggers. I found out what those triggers are. Luckily I was aware that this could happen to me more easily than the average person, and because of discussions with my brother I knew some signs to watch for and knew that if X and Y happened, I needed to not dismiss it as a one-time or short-term thing, but needed to get some help.

In mid-December I went to my doctor, described my symptoms, and got some help. Antidepressants take time to start working, and with some people there can be initial side effects. I had a bit of mental fog (which on top of the decreased mental acuity I already had, meant that I was having more trouble keeping track of small details), but no mood swings or digestive problems or anything else that I noticed. Then the week before the holiday not-quite-shutdown (the company doesn't shut down, but most people leave town for the holidays, so very little can get done) we get a Big Meeting with Important Stakeholder. Stakeholder has a very broad overall idea of what they want. Bosses agree that, yes, we can help out. We start researching options, put together an initial presentation that's designed mostly to prod Stakeholder into giving us more clarity on what they want.

Halfway through the holiday slowdown, toward the end of December, Stakeholder emails me only (not my boss, who has up until this point been involved in all communications, by boss' request) and says “You know, I really don't like X.” No more feedback than that. No further indication of what they do want. Nada. It effectively has us going into the New Year trying to read Stakeholder's mind and deliver this perfect thing by the end of January. We had a big meeting with Boss' boss, who said that our role in this should be advisory only, not Doing. Problem is, this could mean a lease on life for the team. Problem is, I don't know that Stakeholder got the “advise not implement” talking point, memo, or slide presentation. Problem also is, I think that Boss' boss sold our team as a super-nimble group of high-expertise people when we're four people total, two of whom have not been here for a fiscal quarter, and none of us are experts in handling the size and scope of the project that they're looking to do. We spent the week before “the holidays”, and the first week of “the holidays”, madly researching four possible solutions and coming to the conclusion that the only one that would work was the one that Stakeholder was least likely to be happy about.

I had invited my family to come up and spend the holidays with me. Brother stayed at my house, parents stayed in a hotel. (I have a cottage that’s a good size for one person, comfortable for two adults, and a bit of a squeeze for any more than that for longer than 24 hours.) They helped me out, they acted as a sounding board, they urged me to go back to the doctor, they listened to me as I outlined my exit strategy from the Job That Ate My Life. They helped plan meals, Mom and I alternated cooking, Dad and I alternated cleaning up after meals. We laughed, we played dice and card games, we decorated - and then ate - Christmas cookies, we watched movies. We went to a bookstore and Mom bought me a sketchbook, and I told Mom about color correctors and went with her to get a brow pencil. Mom and I talked about skincare. Dad and I talked about….well, dang it, I don’t know what we talked about. Brother and I talked about jobs, depression, computers and hard drive recoveries, the situation at the place where he’s renting, his own career-change progression and impending job search (I am so damn proud of my brother, he doesn’t just sit idly and gripe, he goes out and makes things happen), and the foibles of our parental units. It was a relaxing holiday and I’m glad I had my family to help take my mind off its “squirrelling around in circles” track. By the time my family flew home, I was relaxed enough to spend New Year’s Day with Ben and Martin (binge-watching BBC’s Sherlock) and not think about work once. I woke up the next day with a headache, and felt non-guilty enough that I emailed the group to let them know that I wasn’t feeling well, I was not coming in to work that day as originally planned, but would work from home a bit on Saturday. I ended up working from home on Saturday for all of two hours before saying, Nope, Done, Enough. I had another appointment with my doctor, I had a plan, I had a strategy to get out of there. It wasn’t a perfect solution, and it did effectively kill my “get longevity” goal, but if the choice was between continuing to beat my head against this particular wall out of loyalty and a wish for job longevity, or letting my quality of life deteriorate even further…the choice was much easier to make.

I’ve gotten approval to change my hours. My boss is very aware of how much stress the team was under (he was under it as well!) The medication seems to be slowly reaching equilibrium. I’m not completely out of this hole, but not only can I see the light, I can see the footholds in the walls. I was lucky enough to know when to get help, and I reached out and got it.

(But I was still Very Very Glad to bid 2014 a heartfelt farewell. It was not the most horrendous year I’ve had in my life, but…let’s just say that the good things stood out very easily this year.)

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