One year ago my life changed for the better

I don’t normally post stuff like this but I feel I need to as since this date last year my entire life has changed.

One year ago today (7 feb 2020) I walked into work after doing unpaid 30min over time the night before, as I couldn’t just hang up on a client & my boss & manager left without even saying goodbye or an email. Upon arriving in the office 15min early, I was promptly told off for staying late, & then for leaving the office light on in the part of the office which wasn’t even my section. Whoever was last in that part of the office should of turned it off.

I then asked my manger to talk about some work due that day that he promised hed sit down with me to discuss on the Tuesday (3 days earlier) he said he’s be right over. This was at 8:40am (still unpaid time), he came to see me at half 12 after I’d spoken to the client twice that morning who wanted to know if my boss had signed it off. I’d basically spent the morning trying to do what I could with the work, so then it was as good as it could be. My boss then came over & told me that I needed to do 3 things with the client, which I had already asked them for & he said he couldn’t get them to me (I’d been asking since the previous Friday). My boss told me this wasn’t acceptable & called the client to which the client then told him it was impossible to get this to us. My boss was not happy with this outcome as it didnt match the answer he wanted. He then told me to just make amends & do my final checks for him to review.

He then moaned that I went out for a walk at lunch time to clear my head despite actually only taking 40min of my 1h break as I was on the phone to another client on his behalf as he was too busy to speak to them, despite the fact he’d gone out for lunch, with an ex member of staff. Come 2:30pm I told him the job wouldn’t be finished upto his standards & that it would be done by 4 & he went okay. Come 3:50 when I said it was ready he reviewed it & said it wasn’t good enough to be submitted & that it would miss the deadline. He then called the client & basically said it was my fault the deadline would be missed, despite the fact that I had been asking him to review certain things, I wasn’t sure of for the majority of that week, & that i had told him this would be the case earlier & that if he wanted it done to his standards he would have to step in. He then sat down with me & basically micro managed my past weeks work (which was what he’d been to busy with to help me earlier in the day) & told me I spent too much time emailing & calling clients & HMRC (the latter both for him) & that I needed to cut back on it. 

Then at 4:30 my I logged off everything & asked everyone who was left in the office if they had plans for the weekend (now in my own time) & was greeted by a wall of silence. No one answered or even acknowledged me. So I put on my scarf & headed out the door without even wishing everyone a nice weekend, something i hate to do because i am a polite person (manners maketh man) & that just didnt sit right with me at all. I went to my hair dresser, a man I adore & moaned about work to him for 2 hours & had a right good chat about JoJo Rabbit & how Taika Waititi is king, & then after he’d finished with my hair, he broke the news to me that he was going back home to Australia & I wouldn’t see him again.

By the time I walked through the door at 7:15 (12 hours after leaving the house) I was an emotional wreck & just fell apart. At that point i had never felt that low in my life before… we will get to that in a bit…

That weekend I wrote my cv & from that moment on my life changed. I didn’t even try to ask people at work about there lives or plans, as much as they were lovely people, their lack of social interaction & compassion at that point started to put my mental health at risk & at that point I no longer enjoyed my job. 

Resigning in the middle of lockdown part one was a pretty low point but after being told I was incharge of doing the furloughing & training the rest of the office as to how to do it & then not being given the recognition i deserve for it, that hit a nerve & made me realise i was making the right decision in leaving. There was one point where I genuinely felt like throwing my lap top out the window. My mum had to stage an intervention at one point, as I was sitting on the floor upstairs in my home office crying, as I was getting no support from work at all & there was 5000 questions from them & I just wasn’t getting any work done at all & then when i wasnt i was being asked well why has this not been done. Oh i don’t know mainly because i can only do 500 jobs at once & not 5000.

I think the fact that my actual boss who employed me tried to move heaven & earth to make me stay including bonuses & extra pay said a lot, but at this point my self worth, mental health & i had to come first & I had to go for my own sanity. They said things would change during my notice period, to try & convince me to stay & make thing much calmer & be more helpful. I mean it did get a bit better for 3 days, then the micro managing was back (which is an achievement if I’m honest doing that via teams is quite a skill). I was told off for being on hold to HMRC about furloughing, something they kept asking me to do for a client & then when I had the balls to say I’ve worked an hours over time I’m talking that off on Friday afternoon they went well you shouldnt have worked it & hung up the phone. I did at that point answer back & go yea but did you want to call them up at 3pm & be on the phone to them for 3hours( I mean they couldnt fire me I’d already resigned) that was met with disgruntled noises from them but no sense of actually thats a good point that, she actually got through to them (something thats still an achievement today) & finally got round to trying to solve this problem for us. Even on my last day at 4:30 they were busy asking why I hadn’t completed something yet & I said that been in your inbox for the last 10days as it needs your approval as I can’t sign it off, it has to be you. It was so therapeutic to log out of everything at 5:10 (unpaid over time when I’d technically left) .

One year on, okay we are still in a pandemic but I have a boss who cares about me & if things aren’t going well or I need a hand drops everything to go over it with me or actually does some of the work herself. I have colleagues who care about me. I have a smaller commute. I may not be able to see my friends but they have been there for me through all of this. I’m closer to my family despite not seeing them. My mental health may still be a bit all over the place but not because of work but from life & the pandemic in general. & I finally have moved out. I am in such a better place now then I was a year ago .

My kitchen floor reset last year worked & I am no longer treated like an office junior who’s there to do a bit of admin (which I shouldnt have been doing anyway). I feel valued in life once again in this uncertain world & that means the world to me. This isnt the way to go about getting your self worth back people, a kitchen floor reset is the last resort, but sometimes it takes that moment to just make you stop once youve finished crying & the world has fallen apart, to then just go fuck it & embrace the day.

I know everyone says there family are the world to them, especially right now in these times, but mine really are. I really dont know where i would be without them. They may get on my nerves from time to time but i know i get on theres too. Theres a sign on our door that says just remember that everyone else believes that we are a normal family. Yeah like hell we are, but our weirdness is what makes us, us & i love our quirky ways & i love them all soooooo much. I know they know that but putting it down in writing means its here for everyone to see.

I love my girls too. Again we are not normal oh no no no. But the fact that every friday since Lockdown started we have met on zoom for a chat, or a craft night, or party, or bingo, or for me to beat them at a quiz (yeah sorry ladies about that) says alot about how close we are. It really is something special, & i know its not actually seeing them in person but knowing that there is at least 5 other people on a zoom call on a friday night to look at those different faces & just talk random shit to about 12:30am is the perfect escapism i need. I seriously couldnt have done lockdown part 1 2 or 3 without them.

One of the people who has always inspired me & comes up with things like these is Jake Humphries. He has always said dont sit in a comfy chair to long as then you wont appreciate the others chairs for what they can offer & i was listening to him talking about embracing the day when i wrote my letter of resignation. So i messaged him, to tell him that his words have inspired me to be brave & go out on my own & try a new challenge. I was expecting nothing back at all i just wanted to say thank you for his words of wisdom, so when i got a voice note back from him while i was sitting there in my last few weeks of my last job getting over the line, that was the pick me up i needed to do those last few days, to get to the other side & turn me into the person i am today.

Finally i want to thank an ex boss (different to the ones above) & former colleague… if she reads this she will know exactly why. Cheers for being the voice, the walking buddy, & the confidant. It was nice for someone else to see it all too & help me to realise that i wasnt going mad. We will go & celebrate i promise.

Sorry about that peoples. I needed to get that all out of my system & as i like to type & blog thats what i thought id do. I would say usual programming will resume, but cinemas still arent open. So onto that Paddington 2 review i guess. I cant hold back on that one any longer now can i.

Just Remember Its Okay Not To Be Okay.