WORK

I expected work today to be terrible because I had some kind of anxiety attack on Friday and I basically spent all weekend expecting to get another one today. That’s the problem here. When you wobble once, you start feeling on edge about it happening again. You’re essentially anxious about being anxious.

I found my thoughts were so negative.

I expected HR lady to be in (she was).
I expected her to go out for lunch with Becky (she didn’t).
I expected her to email me this afternoon and ask for a ‘chat’ at 4:00PM, because this is what she does when she needs to speak to me (she didn’t).

I got myself quite worked up about it, because I decided that I wasn’t going to stay late to speak to her (I leave just after 4), so I’d have to ask her to schedule it within work hours, which is a bit standoffish (why are you putting me in this position), and I’d also have to figure out how to navigate the conflicting feelings between the distrust I feel towards her for lunching with Becky and the desire to express all the weird things that have happened and ask if she really thinks they’re acceptable in a professional workplace (hint: they’re not if you want to keep employing me).

The reality was much more boring – nothing happened. Has she forgotten she’s supposed to be speaking to me?! I feel incapacitated by not knowing what to do, so I’m not going to advance the situation myself, but I definitely resent feeling that she’s lost interest.

Then on the train home I checked my LinkedIn. Two people have viewed my profile today. LinkedIn is quite fuzzy with how it tells you who viewed your profile. Some people it tells you straight up, others get hidden behind a description like “One person works at …”. So anyway. One person works at a local university, which is strange, because this is the second time this has popped up now and I didn’t go there or know anyone who is currently there and universities don’t tend to recruit software developers. But HR lady is doing a PhD there… has she put it as work instead of education?

And the other person is Becky. Of course it is. Because when I’m on the train what I really want to see is Becky’s face on my phone. She viewed my profile at around 1PM today. So she probably knows I’m looking to leave now. She is only the second colleague to look at my profile – I suspect because none of my other colleagues log into LinkedIn very often, because they’re not looking for other jobs…