Today (yesterday? It’s 1:36AM but I haven’t gone to sleep yet) was my 3 year work anniversary. I didn’t think I was going to make it, especially last year, and I’m the one still standing. I’m still unhappy about how much I was held back and how much of an impact that still has today regarding position and earnings, but the last couple months have been surprisingly rewarding. Instead of dealing with a fuckton of politics and being set up to fail, I report to someone who says “yeah do the thing,” and sends emails approving me to handle whatever, however I see fit. I’m exhausted, I don’t know how many hours I’ve worked every week for the last few weeks. I had a bad mental block a couple days ago, then today put everything I got back from everyone together, onboarded a new automation process, fixed gaps from audit findings, submitted feature requests, was in meetings with other orgs, sent out a launch announcement… that’s half of today and I don’t feel like thinking about the rest. My calendar looks really bad, this isn’t a competition I want to win and I’m getting close. I don’t know if this is really going to amount to anything and it’s hard not to be discouraged af since I’ve poured myself into work before and gotten nowhere, but I’m running three projects on top of the normal dailies and am getting recognition in email chains and in meetings I’m not in and hearing about it later. It’s one hell of a 180 from this time last year.
This is me proving I always belonged and was always able to deliver, it was my former boss who had his team taken away from him. He left the company at the start of the summer. His reputation still echos when I work with other teams who had to deal with him. When they find out where I was before my current org they’re all like, well at least he’s gone and you seem pretty happy with what you’re doing now. Having free rein to do all of this has been weird, and great. Weird and great. I can’t run at this pace forever though, I’m never home. My sleep is suffering more than normal, and I want that work life balance I had when I first got here. This is still way less stressful than leadership trying to sabotage me, or meetings with lawyers and internal HR investigations. I’m tired af. I’m okay with how today went.