trainwreck

ah, jobs.

we have to have them if we want to do things like have a place to live, eat food, get pedicures, or occasionally buy U2 tickets or flights to portugal. you have to have a job in order to "take vacation". you have to have a job because not having a job means that people will pity you or decide that you are a slacker. sitting around watching TV all day is only fun for, say, about 4 days. especially unfun when you have no money. if you had lots of money and lots of time, you could do things like paint paintings and write and walk along the beach and volunteer and go shopping.

finding myself without lots of money, i have to keep my job.

which at this point seems to imply that i will also have to try not to go crazy and/or get fired.

is it really possible to get a new job if you get fired? i have this notion in my head that one axing makes you unhireable for, like, 7 years. like filing for career bankruptcy. true? i have no idea.

sigh. so the trouble is, i like my job. i like the work of it. i think i really am helping people, and despite the clucking disappointment of my boss, i think i am pretty good at it. she does not think that i am good at it, and behind the strained smiles and the forced squint of cakey eye shadow, she has finally decided to make her frustration known to me. and it is a trainwreck.

train. wreck.

i can concede after a day of stomach-in-knots despair that some of her criticisms are valid. i do have a lot of trouble with the marketing copy. maybe that is because i am a program manager and not a marketing professional. maybe it is because my writing style is a bit less pedantic and treacly than i am instructed to be. in any case, she has hated every blessed thing i have given her lately, and i cannot seem to crawl out of the pit i have dug for myself.

bonus! my annual review is coming up. that should be a barrel of monkeys. i wonder if they will put me on probation?

so. i know that Jesus is beside me in this mess. and i know that i will not be abandoned to the wolves. i am confident that this will work out, even if i get sacked. and i am confident that it will likely be very very difficult.

job stress is hard to shake. you have to wake up in the morning and march back into it. even engagement ring shopping with Roommate and Hooooney last night could not quite shake it, and i barely slept at all last night. maybe i had a slight diamond buzz. most likely i was nocturnally mulling over joblessness scenarios....

to sloppily misquote bridget jones:
it is a truth universally acknowledged that the moment one part of your life begins to go well, another part falls spectacularly to pieces.

sigh.