Paranoia?

I’ve felt quite stressed just lately and I think I’ve finally worked out why. In November I’ll have been at my current job for a year. A year is the milestone I’ve always had in my mind when I think I should be starting to look around and see if there’s anything better. At some point, someone will offer me £10k more to do the same job as I do now, assuming I actually put myself out there.

That’s all fine. I’m content with that.

What stresses me though is the thought of references from my previous job. When I left my previous job, my ex boss promised me a glowing reference. That’s already sounding alarm bells, because I came to form the opinion that anything he promised had a very low chance of happening. He also said he’d provide me with a copy that I could “keep on file”. Guess what: that didn’t happen. So, hmm. The thought that he could sabotage me with a bad reference is a bit disconcerting. I don’t really think he would, but I hardly left on good terms. I mean, I was polite about it, but I left because I thought he was useless and I’m pretty sure he picked up on that!

I looked up the law on references. References must be fair and accurate, which means that he couldn’t really give me a bad reference without opening up a legal avenue (which I absolutely would pursue). He couldn’t even safely write something truthful because I could argue it was unfairly selective and misleading. They actually use my work as the leading example of their abilities and achievements on their website, even now, almost a year since I left. He could hardly justify a bad reference.

So maybe I’m just being paranoid here, but I made sure the current website snapshot is saved in the Wayback Machine and I’ve downloaded a copy and put it on my Google Drive so it’s timestamped.

👍

This is how my mind is working at the moment. On the one hand I’m pragmatic and prepared and I’ll be grateful for it if I end up suing him, but on the other, I’m not sure a calmer mind would be exploring this eventuality.

I am trying harder to stop the spiralling thoughts. I’ve prepared, it’s fine, I can leave it at that. And breathe… I didn’t have to do this when I was on citalopram.

Oh yes, and the other thing is that if I am going to start doing a passive-ish job search again then I need to get back on LinkedIn. I deleted my profile a few months ago because I received a few unwanted messages from SOMEBODY from my previous job. I left my previous job because of bullying. My boss was useless in resolving it. That’s the summary. When I got this person contacting me on LinkedIn, it didn’t bother me much but I just deleted my profile because it wasn’t doing anything useful for me and it didn’t make sense to let it serve as a way for her to deliver messages to me. But I need to get back on there. I don’t really want to do that because… I don’t want to make myself able to be contacted by her, I suppose. I don’t want her knowing where I work. I know I can block her but she used two different accounts to send the messages. I can’t block accounts she hasn’t created yet.

It connects me virtually to somewhere I want to leave behind.