To My Dear Imaginary Readers:
I apologize. I have been neglectful, I know. I’ve just been so busy what with Off Culler, with job-searching, and with life in general – ya know, going to awesome concerts like Jamie Cullum and Ben Folds, going on a coupla dates, trying to train for this triathalon (too many Ts!), and all that jazz… plus it’s my BIRTHDAY soon so I have to sorta plan that stuff, though my wonderful roomie is helping out… so yeah, excuses, excuses.
Are you mad because I haven’t been updating lately? Want to help me be more blog-loyal by finding me a job I don’t hate? If this sounds like something you’d be into, then by all means enter My Blog Contest #2 – Find Ginnie A Job She Enjoys. I’m looking for stuff in marketing/PR/advertising/writing – all fields I think I’d rock out at – and entry-level is most likely the name of the game but I will take a look at anything. And since I’m trying to also kick-start a side gig of mine doing natural skincare consultations (email me for more info if interested!) I will happily look at part-time and full-time opportunities. Oh yeah, greater Seattle area. Seriously, let me know if you have any leads, I promise I will take you out to lunch with my first paycheck from the new job if you get me one :)
Man… one of my old coworkers publicized the existence of my blog to the rest of the firm when she left, so now I never know if people from work actually read it, but they could. To be honest, I’m not that concerned one way or another – what does that say about my sense of self preservation? – but now I feel that much more leery about posting things about my coworkers. AND YET: here’s a fun story from work!
So yesterday, a coworker who’s distinctly not my normal boss was bugging me incessantly about a certain time-consuming project I’ve been working on, and wanting an estimate of how long it’d take, being far more obnoxious and pushy than even my actual boss would normally be. So finally, after the eleventeenth time he asked, I said “Well, it takes longer with every time you interrupt by asking me how long it’ll be”. And he BUSTS out laughing. I love that he thought I was kidding. I just sat there with my straight face and was like, “No, I’m serious”. I waited until he left before I started cackling about it, heh heh.
See? Such cavalier blatant rudeness would never have escaped my lips, at least not to someone’s face, a year ago. Wait, now that I think about it, I once said basically the exact same thing to my boss in the exact same type of scenario about a year ago, but I wasn’t trying to be snarky or bitchy, I was just deer-in-headlights responding in a moment of extreme stress. And my boss didn’t laugh; she left me alone to do my frickin’ job. I don’t know what the moral of this story is, except that deadlines are stressful enough without people hounding you about them.
Anyway, after retelling that interaction, a pal and I were joking about our jobs we hate and how you go through five stages of burnout, kind of like the process you go through when dealing with a death. Drumroll please:
Stage 1: Disappointment in all the things you think your company/employer/whatever does wrong. Mixed with mild shame/embarrassment for working for such a company.
Stage 2: Apathy. You just don’t give a fuck anymore, which is what permits you to spend most of your work day blogging or surfing the internet and checking your email instead of actually working. You turn in projects fully and completely aware that they are filled with shortcomings and mistakes and typos and the like. You don’t give a shit.
Stage 3: Irritability. You start picking fights, pushing issues that aren’t even worth it, etc. just to have something to do or get riled up about. You also get defensive when accused of not performing at top capacity, when you know full well that you’ve been blogging instead.
Stage 4: Self-Sabotage. This is the part that allows you to be a blatant bitch to people that your career counselor would probably tell you to not burn bridges with. Also the part that leads you to start intentionally underperforming, instead of just doing it out of laziness, in the hopes that perhaps you’ll get fired, which would really be doing you a favor at this point. This is also the part that somehow justifies talking about coworkers on your blog which is the very first hit when one performs a Google search of your first and last name.
Stage 5: Revenge. This is the part where you start stealing office supplies, or if you’re really on top of it, ordering in advance the stuff you know you’ll later want to steal.
In all honesty, I can enter and exit all five stages within a half-hour period at this point, though I have no idea what that means. So again, I can’t TRULY promise to blog more until that whole “satisfying employment” thing works itself out… but I’ll try :)