Digress and Regress

I’m doing it again. 

Remember a few months ago I said I wasn’t going to compare or complain so much?

Yeah…I’m slipping.

Let me give you an example of how I’m comparing.

So you know how I’m writing a book? And it was like kicking my ass? Yeah, so I finally finished the damn thing Sunday night. And yeah, after I typed the word, “The End” it felt sorta good. But then I went to sleep and woke up and started bashing myself.

Why did it take you so long to finish?

Everyone else writes faster than you.

Now you have to revise and watch you take even longer to do that.

You are wasting your life away doing this.

This might not be as good as you think. Wait for that first rejection letter to confirm that you suck.

Yeah, my Inner Voice is a mean girl bitch, ain’t she?

Paul noticed what I was doing right away. . Monday, at lunch, he and I were talking on the phone and he said, “Listen to you. You worked so hard to do this huge thing and now you’re just shitting all over it like it’s nothing. You do this all the time.”

He’s right. I do. It’s terrible. I’ve got a terminal case of Imposter Syndrome . I thought I got rid of it but I guess it was only in remission.

Well, I’m aware of it now. Plan is to work through this and be kind to myself. That’s the cure. Say nice things to yourself. Like this:

Wow, you did it! After all those writing classes and conferences, you have a beginning, middle and end. This is huge! Do you know what this means? All those unfinished stories you have? You can finish those too. This proves you can do the whole thing. Isn’t this amazing? You struggle with focus and yet you managed to stay disciplined enough to get this done. I’m so proud of you.  Who cares how long it took! It got done, didn’t it? And based on what your beta reader said, it’s not gonna be too hard to revise. At its core, the writing is solid. You might just have some grammar stuff and a few writing technicalities to fix, but the voice? Yeah, you have that down pat. Your writing voice is definitely not gonna need fixing. It’s unique and obvious from page one.  Do you know how great that is? So many writers struggle with that and you come by it without struggling. You’re better than you think you are, you know, and no, this wasn’t a waste of time. Far from it. If anything, you did something that gave your life meaning. That’s never a waste of time. Even if does suck, who cares? Write another one.

Okay, good. That’s a good start. Do more of this, Me.

Now the complaining part…

I’ve saying “I hate my job” so much that my tongue has muscle memory now and I say it almost like how Valley girls say the word “like.”

Yes, we’ve established this, Self. You hate your job. No, let’s clarify, not the job itself, but the company you work. That’s the part you can’t stand. There’s no leadership here. Everyone is out for themselves. That’s why the retention rate is 48%.

But you swore you’d give it a year. That’s another 6 months. That will go by faster than you know. You have things coming up that you can look forward to. And you can adjust and adapt yourself to what you don’t like about your work day. Things like:

1.     The Drive. The commute is not fun. 2 hours of driving a day. That’s hell on my spine. But I can make sure I do my exercises to try to bear through it. The other thing about this drive is the time. I think I need to use my time wiser while I’m sitting and pressing on the gas. I’ve got lots of things I could do.

a.      Audible: you have a subscription. Paul has been begging you to read “Name of the Wind” for like, 5 years now. Might as well listen to it.

b.     Podcasts: SBTB, Friendshipping, NPROne, ThingsToKnow…you’ve got tons of things to listen to and keep that brain of yours amused.

c.      Learn a language: you can get started on German. Perfect your French. Maybe try a dash of Spanish. You drive 2 hours a day to work. That’s at least 8 hours a week. In a month that’s like 32 hours. Do that for like 3 months and you’ve gotten at least 100 hours of the language. You’d be able to survive if you had to leave this country b/c of all the gun violence and hate and live somewhere safer.

d.     Dictate: I could just talk to myself. I get a bunch of cool story ideas driving. Why not dictate it. Just have to make sure I speak slowly.

I suppose that’s the key to surviving conditions that you detest. You gotta find little bits of joy along the way. I remember a study down about that in Sociology class. There were these men with the most boring job. I think they worked in a factory or something doing something with screws. Whatever it was, the work was boring and repetitive. The sociologist studied them and found that the way they broke the monotony of their job was to create little events throughout the day that they looked forward to. For example: 10 a.m. was when they all ate a snack. 12 p.m. was lunch. 2 p.m. was tea break. 4p.m. was chatting. They also made a game out of what they were doing so that it wasn’t so mind-numbingly boring.

My newest mantra is “Thank you.”  Don’t explain. Don’t complain. Just keep saying “Thank you.”  

I’ve said that before and forgotten. Okay, I say it all the time and it sticks for like a few weeks and then I drop the ball and I go back to whining.

I have to see the positives. There’s always a positive. I mean, even if you ended up in hell, you could (in my very twisted way) say you would never feel cold again because the place was so hot. (Unless Dante's Inferno was right).

I wonder what it says about the job that I’ve reached this state. Full discloser, I asked if I could go part time and they said no.  I drive about 2,000 miles a month for this job and they still won’t allow me Work From Home 2 days a week.  Oh. And they cut our pay for no reason last month, despite a company meeting a week before touting on and on about how the company is growing. So…yeah.

It’s fine. I’m leaving anyway. I don’t care. I just need to stick it out 14 more paychecks. That’s it. After that, who knows. Maybe I’ll take the certification exam for my role and be all official. Or do something completely different. I don’t really care as long as it’s not with this company.

Paul thinks Work-At-Home would be a world of difference to how long I’d stay here. He might be right. I don’t know. For some reason, I’ve romanticized not having a job, the freedom of that. But he’s quick to point out, “You were miserable. You were freaking out b/c you had no money.” And then I’m like, “Oh…yeah. But are you sure I was this miserable?”

I’m going to do it. This week, anytime I get filled that urge to say, “I want to quit” I’m going to say something else like, “I’m still breathing, and that means I’m alive, so that’s good.”

Is that too simple, you think?

Or maybe I should just Pandora and dance my way through this ordeal. 6 months will go by faster than I think.

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Repeat: This is not forever. This is temporary. All the things you cannot stand now are all the things you’ll forget later.