Hmm, so. My mood has been very up and down since returning to work. Monday was hard, Tuesday was good, today was bad.
Today was bad probably because I woke up very early (4:00AM) and felt very worried about the job seeking. I think it’s a throwback to the police issue, where I’d wake up at all hours feeling scared, nauseous and just wanting to die. It was exactly the same feeling this morning. My body hasn’t recalibrated its stress response. It kind of made sense feeling suicidal in the fog of 4:00AM because I was scared of legal proceedings, but it doesn’t really make sense to feel that way because I’m nervous about changing jobs. I wonder if I should have given it more time, but I don’t know, work isn’t comfortable. What I really need is a 3 month holiday.
I saw my counsellor last night though and she said she could see a huge difference in me since the last time I saw her, two weeks ago. I was talking about planning for my future instead of just how to survive until the next session. She’s right, I’ve come on a long way in a short space of time. I need to remember that.
I found work hard because that was just how I was set up for the day at 4:00AM, which ironically made me feel better about the prospect of moving. I found Becky annoying. When I am stressed, I have a much harder time being around her. It frustrates me seeing her being polite and friendly and professional to everyone else. It makes me feel singled out. Sometimes I care about that, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes it’s fine because I understand that her treatment of me has been bizarre and is a reflection on her and her alone. Other times, when I’m feeling bad, I just want social acceptance. Today I cared and I find it very hard to switch off from when I’m in that mood. Even now, at 10PM, I feel bad about it and I probably won’t sleep tonight because of it.
I found myself feeling apprehensive about the next meeting with her and HR, which is pencilled in for next Thursday but I don’t expect it to happen then. It was left before HR lady went on holiday that I’d requested to speak with her before the meeting, so I’m expecting her to appear on Monday and invite me for a chat. I spoke to my counsellor about this yesterday and said “I just don’t know how to approach this?”. She focused me onto what I’d said before, i.e. that I felt I’d put a lot of effort into the previous meeting and Becky hadn’t; that I’d approached it seriously trying to achieve some improvement between us but she hadn’t. So that’s what I’ll say to HR lady, and I’ll use words like “disappointed”, and express doubt that another meeting will be helpful if Becky approaches it the same way again. It puts the ball in Becky’s court and gives me a bit more time in which I might get a job offer.
I have my suspicions that Becky is looking to leave as well though. She’s not a career focused woman but I noticed she’s been active on LinkedIn (just what I needed to see when I clicked an update inviting me to congratulate an ex-colleague on their new job – Becky’s face next to the first comment). She’s also had a few days in the past few weeks of coming in at 11AM, which is very unlike her, and a day off sick last week. Interviews?
If she does leave, though, it confuses things a bit for me. I could stay here another few years comfortably if she wasn’t around.
Rambles 