I have to apologize, I’ve been light on stories for you lately and since I’m pretty sure that’s what blogging is about, I’m sorry. I’ve been in a challenging work environment for the past four months and my day to day my mantra has finally become “just get through it”. Unfortunately “getting through” has meant choking back on my emotions, which isn’t in my nature and has seemed to left me permanently short of breath, without the energy to write and a little afraid of what will happen if I look closer at my situation with some honesty.

So since I’ve been holding back, this is the story of the past four months:

Last year I worked a comfy job where I had nothing to do for 6 months of the year. I pleaded with my work to change the position to part time and when they declined, I took a job where I would have an incredibly challenging workload and would be succeeding into a management position immediately. I start working, a month passes and things change. People who were supposed to leave, stay, and so the adventure begins.

The building is beautiful, the work is interesting, but the atmosphere is edgy. I wonder why, everyone is so nice. My co-workers give me vague warnings and ask me how I am. I wonder why, everyone is so nice! And then it starts to happen. No matter what I do, no matter how precisely I work or how ahead of deadline I am, or how specifically I address everyone’s concerns, everything I complete is returned to me with revisions and a little note that implies I’m stupid.

Extremely stupid. Careless. Incompetent. Information is withheld from me in an effort to test me. I’m repeatedly asked questions about why I can’t stop making mistakes, and what specifically is my weakest point in my opinion, by an amused manager who smiles at me like I’m a child being asked to speak in front of adults for the first time.

Know that I can’t possibly explain it fully, and that if you want the password for protected posts and a little more context, just comment, but know that I examined all avenues I could and none did anything. Oh to dream of a workplace with an HR department! So suffice it to say that the past few months have been hard.

I can take a challenge here and there, and I can work with strong personalities, but after a number of months of it being both implied and stated every day that I’m useless and stupid, I stopped being proud of pushing through what others hadn’t been able to push through. I stopped wanting to answer questions that are intended to humiliate me instead of help me be better. I stopped wanting to hand in work. I stopped caring about why everyone supported this person and saw that there was nothing I could do or say that would change the situation.

So who am I?

I’m a quitter.

After long talks with Mister and my family, we’ve decided to air lift me out of this situation. And I’m not just leaving, we’ve worked our budgets so I can take the summer off! I can’t express to you how happy this makes me, I worked full time in the summers during high school, full time during my year off school, full time during my equally full time university studies, and full time through to now. I would characterize half of these workplaces as equally abusive, and all have been in the entertainment industry – an industry I’m not willing to work in any more. Mister and I are in a strong financial place, but I’m falling to pieces.

So after a lot of discussion, I’m taking the summer off…and Happy Canada Day, today is Day One!!

I will have so much more for you in the coming weeks, I know I will finally be able to write again and I have so many projects to work on. We’re going to be living on the skint and working hard to see how long we can live as a one income family – and we’re excited to look at what that means for how work will look in the future for both of us.

It’s taken a while for me to not see this as a failure but as an act of liberation, where I can re-examine my priorities in life and work and take some time for me, but I’m there now and I couldn’t be more grateful. It’s been an insane year- this time a year ago I was still planning our wedding and prepping to move into our little house on the prairie.

I’m so glad we have the time to let me pick up the pieces of my heart after this cap to a series of wild experiences, and to figure things out, and I can’t wait to see what happens.

Thank you so much for your support! You all break my heart!

{Image: fubiz}