Paralysis

My former boss can clearly be describe as a first rate bully.  She yelled, belittled, humiliated, intimidated and lied at every possible opportunity.  It was a daily nightmare that gave me headaches, stomach aches and eventually led me to medical intervention and an official job change. 

But the fallout of suffering under her tyranny has left me trying to drag myself blindly out of the dark hole she dumped me in.  After living in fear of her attacks, I am happy to admit that my new supervisor and team are supportive, encouraging and just a joy to work with and for.  I would have sworn I was just fine and dandy without any reciprocal fallout, but Thursday I made a human error and I was paralyzed with fear.  I quickly corrected my very small error, informed all the related parties and waited for the hammer to fall heavily on my head.  NOTHING happened.  The error was corrected, no harm done, no one yelled, no one made me feel incompetent, but the paralyzing fear was still there.

It took that first mistake to remember that human errors happen and unless I am in the medical profession or holding a weapon or have my finger on the red button that ends the world, my mistakes are just mistakes.  I also remember the stifling impact of bullies.  I can easily see my former supervisor as a bully among her peers as a child, adolescent and adult.  Or maybe she had been a bully and had promised herself that if she ever got the upper had, she would use it to smash those around her.  Unfortunately I was the bug trapped beneath her for far too long.

Maybe I need an adult support group for the victims of workplace bullies, but for now, I have pills and prayer.

Take this Job & ______________(you fill in the blank)

Today I am taking a few minutes to reflect on where I am and where I am going.  I’m not tying myself down with the destination, just focusing on the journey. 

I’ve been actively de-cluttering my life, both my physical and mental space, since my father died two years ago.  I have thrown away, given away, and discarded over a third of my possessions, all with the goal of being free.   It took a while for me to realize that the physical things in my life were only part of the problem.  I had to deal with my mental clutter as well. 

I changed jobs (actually asked for and accepted a demotion), just so I would not have to deal with the devil with the bad bleach job I worked for daily.  For every definition of toxic boss I’ve ever read, I have a true life experience that I suffered through for her entertainment.  My off days, weekends, holidays, etc, were cluttered with assignments that no human could finish or the nagging fear of what would happen next.  That life, that fear, that existence had to go. 

I was scared blind; I thought I was shooting myself in the foot, ending my own career.  But now that I’m on the other side, it’s amazing; it’s an endless WOW moment.  It’s nice to NOT deal with CRAZY day after day.  It cleared the clutter of my job out of my space.

That was probably the biggest hurdle I had to jump, it’s just a job.  It is a long way from being the definition of who I am.  It does not meet my definition of happiness or success.  It is just what I do, it is not who I am.

So I traded the title and stress and headaches for a quiet cubical that I occupy for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.  No more late nights, no more weekends, no more nightmares about what I did or didn’t do.  Just 8 quiet hours that stay completely confined within the cubical I work in.

It’s not perfect, it’s just a job.  I no longer look to my employment as the source of my fulfillment.  There is so much more to my life (another WOW moment).  When you do the math, less than half of my life is spent working and sleeping, the majority of my time is free for me to enjoy the process of being me, experiencing my children as adults, getting to know my mother as a friend, and finding out who I am in the middle of it all.

44 years into the process of being me, I’ve finally realized that what happens at any given moment is not the definition of my life.  Today is not my life, its just Wednesday, July 6, 2011.