the view from my corporate hotel room

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I'm still travelling.

Adelaide finished last week and this week it's Perth again. I never intended to sign up for a job that meant I only get to see home at the weekends, especially when I only moved into that home in one of those weekends and am not entirely sure where "home" is.

15 long hotel weeks.

I'm still unsettled, still overworking, still hating my job (there I said it! why am I so scared to admit I hate my job?), still bingeing and still repeating that record.

Last week I worked until 2am on two nights, 3am one night and a magical 4am on yet another. Clearly no boss expects this of his team members, so I can't help but take a large dose of responsibility for letting it all get so out of control. However many mistakes have been made by those around me to lead up to this; the project was over-sold and the client under-resourced and quite frankly in cloud-cuckooland, yet I still took all the pressure upon myself to deliver.

I'm just so darned hard on myself. The perfectionist in me wants perfection - it's one of the few times in my life where there really is just a black and a white - there's to be no allowance for doing the best job I could possibly do given all the constraints. Oh no, it has to be p-e-r-f-e-c-t. And it's my responsibility to work myself to the death to get there. Of course for that I torture myself too, telling myself that it isn't right that I should admit to my bosses how hard I'm working or charge the client for my time; they shouldn't be asked to pay for my inadequacies.

Funny thing is, while I'm in the midst of this, I don't see it as perfectionism. I just see it as what I have to do.

This isn't a life. I flew home from Adelaide on Friday night, worked on Saturday and Sunday (as I did last weekend and the one before that) then flew to Perth on Sunday afternoon, working on the plane and then again when I arrived at my hotel until 11pm. Today I was at a new clients where I took a workshop attended by 17 managers and senior managers. The workshop thing is an odd one - you'd think people who do that kind of thing might have a glimmer of self-belief?

Everything's suffering and I'm failing to find the balance that will allow me to get through it all, while also figuring out a plan how never to find myself here again.

I've taken a week's leave next week. I'm fully prepared for the first couple of days to be swallowed up tidying up the lose ends of leftover work, but then I'll be free. FREE!! Jeepers, listen to me, it's not like I'm the only one who's ever had to travel, ever had to put in an extra effort at work for a couple of months - woe is me, boo hoo.

There seems such a connection in my work behaviour and beliefs as with those in every other aspect of my life. I feel like there is probably a very simple cipher, just the one single key to unlock everything. It's all so inter-related.

When I was a teenager, my mum need only look at whether my bedroom was tidy to know whether my homework had been done or how my eating was. If any one of them was a mess they all were, if any one of them was in order, they all were. When I can feel good about work, I know I'll feel good about myself again, and vice versa, if I could feel good about myself perhaps I could feel good about work.

Next week I have my annual review with my boss (yes in my week off!) and I intend to start putting my plans into action. I don't want to change employer, just change role.

Anyways, for a first post in a while this is a bit of a rambled one. Three months of solid travel hasn't served me well. I truly hope that when I look back I can spot all the lessons I need to learn.

I get back to Melbourne on Saturday afternoon and shortly after that I plan to get back to me. I miss me. I miss feeling good, I miss all my new discoveries, I miss how fantastic it is to feel healthy, I miss how great it feels when food's not the enemy, I miss being open and I miss my skinny jeans.

Thank you again for popping by and checking in on me. I sure do get a smile when I see your messages.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good luck Ani! Hope you pull through and then get some rest!

Amrita said...

Yey! You're back. Hope things start looking up from now on and that you manage to have a proper holiday next week.

Tully said...

Good to see you again. I understand everything you're saying 100%, it is hard and it sucks. Feel free to vent and whinge on here!

Take care and try and get some rest in your week off.

The Fat Foreigner said...

Hope things are going ok for you and that you've made it back home! I know the economy is bad ad all, but is there any way you can change/modify your work? Anything that feels this bad all the time can;t be good for you, and the hours you've been working are completely unreasonable! No matter how busy a job is, if you're working those hours something is wrong, and as long as you're willing to pick up that slack it won't change. Your work seems all encompassing right now and I thin you'd have a better time with your weight if you were happier in the other areas of your life.