What is it that stopping me from job hunting? I’m not happy most days at work. Some days have their moments, but more often than not, I feel like I’m caught in an undertow. The more I try to do to keep myself in drowning, the harder I fail.
I think I’ve grown a lot. Most of my growth has related to being more mindful and conscientious. And really thinking.
I suppose I struggle a lot with not always knowing the right things think of, question, look into, and flag. A lot of my adverse reactions have to do (perhaps) with always having the right instinct in my latter years of college.
And even if my instinct was “oh. Gosh. I don’t know, but I can find out.” I felt comfortable finding out.
It was neither endorsed nor frowned upon for me to take the initiative late at night to work on projects, new and old. My office was a haven-the place that no matter where I lived, or what was going on, I always had swipe access and could seek refuge, quiet, and focus.
I think the office has more of an impact on the job than I thought, or would think, on a daily basis.
The manager/boss does too. Although no one can be as good as Kathy, sometimes in regards to skills, I definitely realize that I took my situation for granted.
Everyone there seemed to have an instinctual knowledge of how to delegate to new and fresh employees and students. Although it would often take 2 to 3 times the amount of time to come up with helpful things to have people do that also taught them skills to lead themselves, I was the first to admit the value of that, and usually also the first to embrace it.
I think I could have done better, looking back. I certainly got burned out by the end of it, and stop showing up. Unfortunately, that was my best opportunity to really teach-as a teaching assistant.
Enter today’s roadblocks.
I’m letting the instruction to stop asking questions until I’ve thought long and hard on a question (by myself) to decide if it’s even worth asking.
Cue overanalysis of ever asking a question, ever, ever, again.
Followed by getting into my own head and constantly checking, re-checking both work – and logic.
Maybe to really and truly take time to think, I should show that for the most part, I am copiously and compulsively logging my time. And offer on days that I do really want to reflect on something and think about it elsewhere that I will show show my log for the day and we can work through it from there. I should probably email about the struggles I’m having, and myself doubt about whether I’m even on the right track. And if a noticeable improvement is visible.
Are there more than just my friends and family that really think I can do it?
I feel like a failure whenever I look at my task list and the estimated/budgeted hours and see that I’m done with the first draft, have discussed, and yet I’m only entering in the revisions.
I find it a lot harder to try and think about my time budgeted and also think critically. I need to snap out of it.
I find when I make logic mistakes it was often in a transition moment where I had returned or diverged from it and come back. Sometimes, I had been honed in on the task for too long, and should have stepped away from it for a minute; it became like soup in my brain.
I can’t justify to myself the extra time things took, because they’re still late, and I know being early and over-delivering are mission critical. I try to look back on how to reduce time spent on the reports, and mostly the things that occur to me regard little things that add up: layout tweaks, having what I need before I start, knowing what I need and of what I need, and what I need to request so I can be on time.
I just wish I could put more of my own time into things – not even company time. Just my own free time. I’d do it in a heartbeat.
I like working near home.
I like who I work with.
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