And this morning, my boss inadvertently gave me another reminder of that. I am so grateful for that. I know I’ve talked about it 1000 times in this space (but it’s my space, and I’ll repeat myself if I want to) but I still don’t know that I will be able to properly convey how much this job has truly been among the things that saved my life since I came back to Jersey in shame two years ago. July 17, 2008, actually. That was the date I knew I was coming back, and that I was coming back for awhile.  Six weeks later I was very lucky to start this job. This job made me feel capable of something again, even when it was just putting together a bunch of meeting materials. My boss’s awesomeness is why March 18, 2009 and everything after were not nearly as horrible as they could have been. This job saved my life.

Joe’s been in California, apartment hunting, so I haven’t been harassing him with my usual rounds of cover letters and questions. He emailed last night to agree to feed my cat next week (even though the cat is a racist) and I can’t wait to tell him about My Plan. I would not even be capable of thinking about making this plan if it were not for Joe being my sounding board and support system. He said recently, that he never would have imagined the weird friendship we’ve developed, where we hang out and talk endlessly about careers and existential crises (mostly mine) and dating. I’m sure there’s a sector of the population who would call it fate that I ran into him one morning at the bus stop in O-town, almost three years ago now. That, and several other bus rides, is how he came to be the person who drove me to work the week I was stuck and who reads constant drafts of my schizo cover letters. Joe has saved my life.

Joe is also the reason that Brent and I talk now, constantly exchange emails. We’ll never be the same as we used to, but we shouldn’t. He was still there at my one year in March, because he understood why it was such a big deal. They all did. My old friends have saved my life.

I had actual work to do this morning; a change of pace, as summer here has been dead. Last summer, I exchanged countless emails and was distracted by dozens of gchats with people from Message-Board-of-Note. David, I hardly think of as being from there anymore, such a good friend he was to me when I really needed it. I still have the text message he sent me after that awful, awful seven days that started with the ride to Chicago and ended with my in the hospital: “You have yourself to get better for you jackass. What else would you need?” David has saved my life.

The rest, some who I’ve met, some who I haven’t, made me feel as if I was part of something other than just my head. From these internet strangers, I’ve gotten career advice, CDs in the mail, and, with Ellie, countless hours of ridiculous conversation about Hugh Laurie, kittens, and petty-judgmental-thoughts. They made me laugh, they agreed that O-L-B was a jerk, they looked after me via text message, and once, at thirteen days, when I fretted how little time that was, Timothy replied “No, do you know how many HOURS that is? Right now, 13 days is awesome.”  The Message-Board-of-Note saved my life.

And then there’s me, who bemoaned the fact that 2010 is half over, and that I’ve gotten nowhere. That, on a Friday afternoon, I am sitting barefooted and cross-legged in front of my computer at the same job that saved my life, unmotivated to finished the three job applications that are 3/4^th done, and also, already ready to give up on dating because it isn’t that much fun, and the distraction it provides isn’t worth the opportunity cost. I am twenty seven years old, very much single, and still answering phones, among my many other responsibilities. (“Would you stop that. You’re not,” my boss insisted this morning when I referred to myself as “one of the little people” ((because it’s always “the little people” that bring down big companies)))

But I am 190 or so days into 2010, whereas two years ago, I didn’t even know 190 hours. I’m pretty pragmatic (some days, pessimistic), still filled with regrets for the could haves, would haves, and should haves, and still could afford to lose at least another five pounds.

But there are days that I hope. There are days that I am able imagine that I will one day have a life that is not this. I still can’t picture myself with someone else, and I can’t imagine a successful career, and really, there’s nothing tangible in my vision of My Plan. But there’s just this vague sense that I can do something else, and that one day, I will have a life again, that things will get better, because they already are. I am quite far away from the depths of Depression and darkness and utter stupidity that made my life a living hell for most of 2007 and 2008.

And I got myself here. I proved my worth and I got myself this job. And then, after many false starts, I rallied the troops and I finally got myself the help I needed, that came in ways I never expected it could. And that’s why, on an ordinary Friday afternoon, I’m sitting here writing this sappy, over the top, melodramatic entry, because I didn’t really realize what happened.

Because somehow, when I wasn’t paying attention, I managed something I didn’t know I was attempting.

I saved my life.  

And then I pull back, and there is STILL this reluctance to complain, because it’s not as bad as The-Job-That-Wasn’t. I was sort of relating this to a co-worker last week, that no matter how upset I get about things at work, it was so bad at The-Job-That-Wasn’t, that I really can’t let myself get too bereft. She likened it to an abusive relationship; (“at least this job doesn’t hit me!”) which is overstating the case a bit, but accurate in a black-humor way.

It’s not just the job that’s getting to me. My undergrad is having a 5 year reunion in June, and there’s a facebook group for it, and I stupidly looked through pictures people are posting and got depressed. I knew maybe one person in any of the pictures, but they’re all having typical collegiate fun and reminiscing and blah blah blah I-Had-A-Lousy-College-Experience. Some people are traumatized by their high school experiences and you just want to tell them to get over it. Some days, I’m still not over the fact that I missed out on the college experience. I don’t have friends from college, I don’t have pictures from college, I don’t have memories from college. It was 3.5 years I got through as quickly as I could. Most of the time I am over this, and have made my peace with it.

Occasionally, the resentment and anger at myself creeps up and then I just start thinking about how I wish I could have done it all differently, and how different my life could be right now (different how, I’m not sure) and really, it’s just messy self-pity that really shouldn’t be indulged.

Also, “Welcome to Whereever You Are” came up on iPod shuffle on my way to work and it made me teary. (“You’re caught between just who you are/and who you want to be”) Clearly the stress is getting to me.

Anyway, with keeping things in the vaguest terms, lest I find myself dooced, I will say that this randon clerk in another department screwed up; she didn’t read a request form and sent something to the wrong person. This is bad on several levels.

On one hand I am livid. How could she screw up like this? The form was VERY clear. Why was this error not caught? This is a fairly standard procedure as well; why does she not know what she’s doing? Why hasn’t she been trained?

On the other hand, I cringed, because it’s the sort of thing that I used to do at The-Job-That-Wasn’t. The girl is probably wondering what the big deal is – she’s three or four degrees removed from the situation, and she doesn’t really understand the ramifications of her careless actions. She probably doesn’t “get” the looks that her co-workers/supervisors are exchanging.  She’s undoubtably nodded along and at least pretended to understand the gravity of the situation when her supervisor explains why they have to make a big deal out of it.  Or maybe she does and she’s just as panicked.

Either way, I used to be her. I used to have my major errors picked out by someone else when it was already too late. I used to have the moments of panick and absolute helpelessness, knowing that I had screwed up and that someone else had to fix my mistake.

I really don’t know if this situation will work itself out. And of course, it’s not a matter or life or death. It’s just very expensive and a lot of work and time went into this, so for it fall apart over her little error is really annoying to say the very least.

And not to say I don’t ever make mistakes, because I absolutely do.

But I’m glad it wasn’t me today.

]]> http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2010/04/20/the-science-of-hindsight-will-make-you-cringe/feed/ 0 http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2010/02/08/bringing-the-fret/ http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2010/02/08/bringing-the-fret/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:39:38 +0000 Rachel Not Rebecca http://rachelnotrebecca.com/?p=6566 Let’s see.

The fretting began around 6:00 PM on Thursday. Now, before I get into the rest of this entry, I must emphasize that my anxiety levels IN GENERAL have been at a lifetime low since I got my started getting my head together about a year ago. However, there are certain things that just Bring the Fret, and this particular work situation was/is one of them.

Basically, the story was that we need Signed Documents from four Important People in hand by 9:00 AM on Monday. Documents that, as of Friday, were still not in final form. My boss was understandably concerned, and also tired, since you know, he was the one who wrote the actual things. I am merely She Who Handles Logistics.

Friday morning began with computer malfunctions, schedules changes for Important People, and predictions of a snow-pocalypse. The day was a long game of Hurry Up and Wait, punctuated with intense periods of carefully choreographing how to get the Documents in the hands of Important People and get scanned copies of the Signed Documents back to us.

Let’s just say I went without lunch, made very good friends with some random guy at a company in California (and I have no idea what his title is. He definitely was not just some random admin. I could have been harassing someone Important for all I know.)

Anyway, we had 2 Signed Documents back, and were expecting the 3rd and I was pretty proud of myself for choreographing it. The whole thing was kind of awesome, in a pathetic way. nd then the document we were expecting back late Friday never came. Enter Plan B. And Plan C.

And it turns out all the back-up Plans were for naught, because Important Person does not plan on returning the signed pages today. It must be nice to be that important. If the overtime I put in waiting for documents does not get approved I am going to flip out. Especially since I went on a Fret induced shopping trip this weekend.

The weekend was also way too short, and I didn’t go to the gym, and I don’t care about the Super Bowl and the Snow-pocalypse never came and I canceled a Saturday morning appointment for nothing.

Arg…Last week went by fairly quickly, and I’m afraid this week will be the opposite.

For now, I will just say:

…that even though I was at work until 8:00 PM on Friday night, waiting for Important Documents that didn’t show up…

…and even though I checked my work email about 100x today…

…and even though I got woken up by a work related phone call at an absurdly early hour…

…and even though, the past few weeks (really, since the holidays) work has been filled with crankiness…

This situation has made me once again absurdly grateful that it is taking place at my Current Job and not The-Job-That-Wasn’t.

Were the same situation playing out at The-Job-That-Wasn’t, well, first of all, I wouldn’t know how to handle it, because I wouldn’t have been given any information in the first place – I would have been expected to just do it all myself. But if this was happening at The-Job-That-Wasn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to eat or sleep this weekend, and my Former-Important-Boss definitely would NOT have been able to see any humor in the situation (because seriously? It’s Pieces of Paper that have to be signed by Important People. And we’re driving ourselves CRAZY over it. I mean, obviously there are reasons why this has to be done, but it’s not like life or death).

Instead, after being woken up at an absurdly early hour, I had coffee and did some reading. And checked my email. And then I went out for lunch and shopping and singing in my car. And tonight I broke out the Buffy DVDs (shut up) and also talked to Keithers. And yes, I checked my email about 100 times.

But I’m not afraid to walk into work on Monday morning and I won’t have to spend half the day with my head down, hiding my tears or terrified facial expressions. (Former-Important-Boss made me cry several times a week and towards the end all the stress and worry and horribleness had just built up and built up and it didn’t take much to set me off anyway.)

So although it seems strange to find gratitude in a ridiculous work situation, it’s there. Because I am capable of getting Important Documents signed, I’m having a decent weekend, and my boss isn’t going to make me cry on Monday morning.

And somehow, that never gets old.

I want to write this entry, that I actually started yesterday and didn’t have even a minute to look at today. It was an insane day at work. Insane. I’m covering for someone who is out, and then I have tons of my own stuff to do because it’s the end of the year – lots of i’s to be dotted and t’s to be crossed kind of things. Tomorrow will be couriering pages for signature all over the NY Metro Area. Two days before X-Mas. Yeah, that’s going to be fun.

However, when work is insane like this, and the phone won’t stop ringing, and my desk is an absolute mess, those are actually the days that help me feel the best about my job. Because it doesn’t make me want to crawl under my desk and hide – I can manage everything. My ability to simply handle things still surprises me sometimes, even all these months later. More than months – it’s been over a year now. I’m glad I don’t get tired of feeling capable.

]]> http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/12/22/its-not-brain-surgery-but-ill-take-it/feed/ 1 http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/12/14/finally-using-my-essay-page/ http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/12/14/finally-using-my-essay-page/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:00:32 +0000 Rachel Not Rebecca http://rachelnotrebecca.com/?p=6474 I have posted a VERY rough draft of “The Problem of Replacing Pamie” , the not-so-sordid tale of my experiences at The-Job-That-Wasn’t, is posted over on my Essays page.

The ending in particular just trails off, but if you are so inclined to read, any comments/suggestions would be welcome. I am posting it long before it is finished, because if I don’t, I will never work on it.

That is, in part, what I have been trying to write about for the better part of the year – because I never wrote about it when it was actually happening.

 The working title of the essay is “The Problem of Replacing [Pamie]” (not her real name) and I’m trying to capture what it was like to try and replace someone, who was, in everyone else’s estimation, perfect. Every single day when I would walk into Important-Boss’s office with the morning report, he would glance up, with withering disappointment that it was me, not her standing there. As if she had disappeared instead of been promoted. 

It occured to me recently that maybe I could throw a love affair into the equation; I mean, the man moped around as if someone had stolen his girlfriend away. I was a poor man’s Pamie. An inadequate substitute. Pamie was now four desks away from him instead of just one, and my mere existence made this my fault. And she in turn, no longer had as many reasons to visit his office, and one could imagine her gazing longingly from her new position down the hall.

But alas, there was no actual affair and what was going on with that job is, I think more interesting than any torrid tryst. It’s just not fitting neatly into paragraphs right now. There is so much I want to write, and it is so hard to get this one without sounding like a whine about the terminally unique way I was wronged at work. 

I have said multiple times that the seven months I spent at The-Job-That-Wasn’t were some of the worst of my life. The job was a macrocosm for everything else that was going wrong in my life and all the negatives just fed on each other. I was deeply unhappy and not being able to find any worth in my work, an area that had always been my touchstone, was devastating. Being held up for comparison to someone else, and failing miserably every day was exhausting. Trying to convince myself that the job was okay and that I was okay just added to the exhaustion. 

I have never denied that I was terrible at my job, that I sunk instead of swam, etc, etc. I have never denied that I did not work as hard as I could have to try and learn a job that I was clearly not qualified for in the first place (the job listing had it dressed up as something else entriely). I screwed up big time on several occasions (so much so that my one friend on the job gently asked me if it was possible I was sub-consciously trying to sabotage myself). But I contend that I was never properly trained nor treated fairly. I was never even given the possibility to be anything but not-good-enough.

Because at the end of the day, I was not Pamie. I couldn’t have known it then, but I walked into that job a hated woman. And not just by my boss either, but by everyone in that godforsaken place. And while I was by no means the only person who had problems with The Important Boss, he saved up all his frustrations, all his anger, all his negative for me. I would stand in front of his desk in his office, the seconds painfully ticking away while I waited for a response or further instructions on a document I’d just given him.  

He had gotten under my skin, and he knew it, and I wish I could write about how I feel like he purposefully tried to trip me up without coming across as paranoid, or refusing to take responsibility. 

A torrid love affair would be easier to write about. But it’s been 18 months since I lost that job, and I am have been grateful every single day that I do not have to work there. There are days when my utter gratitude over the fact that I got out of that job overwhelms me, because while I hated going to work every morning, I didn’t realize how bad it was until months after I left.  Every day that job stole whatever bits of self-worth I had managed to squirrel away from the previous day.

That job shredded me into little tiny pieces and made every day feel like the worst of my life. I didn’t truly understand the depths of “I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning” until that job. It was not the only thing wrong with my life, but work is where we spend so much of our time. I spent the time between waking up & starting work in dread and the hours between finishing work and falling asleep in recovery.

Someone, I have to make that sound more interesting that a torrid love affair. 

I was actually on my way up there. I got a call from the staffing agency I’d submitted my resume to and interviewed at the week before. “The Company likes your resume,” the woman told me. “If they want you, would you be available to start next week?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, throwing the phone back onto the passenger seat, and expecting nothing to come of it. In all my job hunting experiences, I’ve never had lot with temp agencies and most of them are scams.

Two days later, she called me back “The company wants you to come in next week. I know you’re on vacation, so can you start on Wednesday?” (the following Monday was Labor Day).

I agreed, thrilled, because job hunting sucks and temp work was better than nothing.

An hour later she called back: “The company REALLY needs you to start on Tuesday? Do you think you could do that?”

Beggers can’t be choosers, so despite my annoyance, I came home a day early, and showed up on Tuesday.

(For the record, they were not expecting me on Tuesday. Thanks a lot, Staffing Agency Lady)

A year later, I am still here (and no longer a temp) and that phone call remains one of the best things that could have happened to me (especially at the time). My worst day here is 1,000x than my best day at the Job-That-Wasn’t.

I am afraid of talking on the phone.

I am awful at it. Either I lose my train of thought and stutter, or I panic and start talking too fast and don’t make any sense.

Just the anticipation of having to deal with phone calls that I am loathe to deal with makes me sick with anxiety. Sometimes, it even drives me to the verge of tears. I have tried every trick there is to get over it, and nothing has worked.

And then, I sound like a crazy person, because it’s a phone call, grow up, get over it.

I don’t think I’ve always hated the phone. When I was twelve, I was content to spend hours on the phone with N.A; we had mutual crushes on each other, and I cannot tell you what we talked about for all those hours, but I know I thought it was important enough to campaign for my own phone line. My parents said I could, if I brought up my grades in Spanish and Math. Therein lay the dilemma – I couldn’t get my own line and spend unlimited time on the phone until I brought my grades up, but I certainly was in no place to bring my grades up when there was a boy who wanted to talk to me on the phone.

Luckily, he lost interest in me, I got straight As the first marking period of 8th grade, and I got my phone line.

Since then, the phone has been a primary form of communication (in high school, before AIM was the standard, and WAY before texting), a form of connection, (in college, to my friends who were far away) and a form of torture (carrying my cell phone around, willing it to ring when I was hoping that HWSNBN would call me.) But in college, other forms of communication became more important. AIM meant I could talk to several different people at once. Email was more convenient than picking up the phone. Making and recieving phone calls just fell out of practice.

It wasn’t until after college that phones started to make me nervous. I was temping at a company that to this day, I have no idea what they did. My job was simple: answer the phone, direct the calls. That’s it.  Sometimes they let me put labels on files, but as a temp, I wasn’t allowed to do anything real.

Anyway, for whatever reason some of the people at this company (engineers? technicians?) were often recieving Important Phone Calls, and the person on the line would request that I page them. I’ve always hated the sound of my own voice, and having to do this several times a day was cringeworthy. Then there was the time — it was my first day actually – when I mistakenly dialed the number for the head of the company just because the delivery guy had his number on the receipt. Luckily, his assistant picked it up and explained what was what. In my own defense, I was only 21, barely out of college and naive to the fact that if someone’s extention is 01, then they are probably pretty important.

In search of health insurance, I did manage to land a full time job. Actually, they didn’t hire me at first. They hired Charice. But poor, unknowing Charice got promoted after two weeks there. As she said once “I sold out. Rachel got hired.” I was still a receptionist, except now I was a receiptionist with health insurance. It wasn’t too bad. Mostly, I just directed people to customer service.

Then I got promoted. It was awesome! It was to a job I actually wanted to do! It was more money! And I wouldn’t be tied to a desk, which to me, was at least 50% of the appeal.

The Friday before I was supposed to start my new position, my supervisor’s boss, without even bothering to pull me aside, told me “oh by the way, we don’t have the money to pay you. So we can’t promote you to that position.”

I was crushed. While it was probably a good thing (it motivated me even more to finish my grad school applications) I felt totally stuck as a receptionist.

By then head of my department liked me. He knew I was smart and felt bad about the whole promotion debacle. He started giving me projects. At first, I was happy at the chance to prove myself and I accepted the admin role in spite of the fact that the new title didn’t come with a bigger paycheck. And the fact that my extension was still 0, I was still tied to a desk, and there were beginning to be mumblings about my phone mannerisms.

It was May, because it was right before my birthday when the suggestion box had a note in it, for probably the first time in its existence. “The receptionist” (it read. not even my name. Just “the receptionist”) is a black hole of despair. would it kill her to fake some charisma ” While this incident is retrosepctively hilarious, I got written up and went on a quest to find out just who the hell cared whether or not I smiled. (the answer: 40 something washed up wannabee opera singer. I got him back though.)

It only got worse from there. Two years later, at the Job-That-Wasn’t, I had to make a lot of phone calls, to people who I could barely understand on the phone, on topics where I had no idea what I was talking about. Additionally, there were times when I was supposed to “pressure” people into getting things done. Mind you, Job That Wasn’t was a tiny company and I was on the phone with Big Important Company that could have cared less about my request, but that did not mean anynoe in my department understood any better why the request was going to take the standard 24 hours.

The last guy I dated refused to call to make plans, instead preferring a barrage of back and forth text messages. That was a little extreme, even for me. But that also didn’t mean my heart didn’t pound wildly whenever I decided to grow a spine, call him, and call him out for being kind of a jerk. (I have regretted most of these phone calls. Don’t keep the phone numbers of people you used to date in your cell phone)

Really, the phone has never done me any good these past few years. All it has done is given me the means to call boys that I shouldn’t call, given me a cell phone that I feel lost when I don’t have, and given various Powers That Be a means to torture me.

When you think about it, texting is kind of like a more advanced form of telegraphing. So clealy Thomas Edison had it right and Alexander Graham Bell ruined everything.

Then he posed a grammar question to me, and we debated it for a minute, and he said “Well, we’ll keep this for now, but think about it.”

So I did. I also posed the question to the Libertarians, because the people there are equally dorky and it of course sparked a conversation about grammar-things. Which led to a conversation about how good grammar is an attractive quality and bad grammar is a Deal Breaker.

As for the grammar question itself, I came up with the right answer, and the evidence to back it up and I think my changes are being accepted.

Of course, in posting the question online, I managed to make a grammatical error because that’s how these things go.

And of course, grammar was a favorite topic between O-L-B and I. Of course.

]]> http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/03/11/grammar-is-hot/feed/ 0 http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/01/14/lunch/ http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/01/14/lunch/#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:51:00 +0000 Rachel Not Rebecca http://rachelnotrebecca.com/http:/rachelnotrebecca.com/blog This probably sounds pretty minor (and repetitive, since I have gone on and on about the fact that I like my job.) but I just had my Official Employee Review this morning. Despite the fact that things have gone awesomely lately, I was fretting about it because, well, last time I was sat down for an Official Review I got fired.

Anyway, I had nothing to worry about.

It is crazy to me that at this time last year, I was spending most of my lunch breaks quietly crying in a concrete office park because my job then gave me so much misery/stress/anxiety that I was reduced to tears on a regular basis. I used to not be able to eat on Sunday nights because I was so anxiety ridden about having to deal with my boss on Monday morning.

It is very nice to be able to have a lunch break like a normal human being, instead of crying in public, because I don’t cry very prettily.

But instead of memory, or a reflection on the fact that yesterday marked nine years to the day that I first kissed The Ex (and the fact that that was nearly a decade ago…my lord), or yet another navel-gazed novel about how I’m feeling I decided to go for a stream of consciousness blather. I’m not even going to re-read this before I post it.

I don’t know why I’m suddenly fretting about work. Maybe its because before this job turned permanent, I had the luxury of being able to say “well, it’s just a temp job. It doesn’t matter too much if I suck.” I’m also probably being over sensitive, because the experience at The-Job-That-Wasn’t was so dreadful that old habits are dying hard. It took me probably a month before I could even ask questions and take the answers at face value.

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My supervisor gave me this Excel spreadsheet to do and it involved figuring out a really hard problem that I’d never done before (pulling datasheets with currency conversions, and enabling macros…yes I am easily amused). After struggling with it, I figured it out. There are no words to describe how good that felt after all the uselessness I always felt at the Job-That-Wasn’t.

Earlier in the day, I couldn’t give verbal instructions on how to fix a problem in Word, and was freaking out about my inability  to do so, but my boss let me just sit down and work on in. And he spoke to me like a person and didn’t yell at me.

And then I wound up having bad dreams involving a poorly dressed me running into The Ex and his girlfriend, who told me they were engaged, and while i was grateful to wake up and realize they are not engaged, it’s something that’s probably coming sooner rather than later. Perhaps I should write “Year Nine” as I was planning to last year, but I don’t know if I can do that without depressing myself.