And so we start again...

I'm job hunting again. Following 2 weeks of tension at work, with my boss calling my work sloppy, being excluded from group meetings and me enduring some rather childish remarks, I sat down with another manager where she flat out told me that I shouldn't be enduring any of this and should be looking for greener pastures.

It goes without saying that I'm angry. A month ago I was being praised about my hard work and all that I was helping accomplish. I was also told that moves were being made to keep me on permanently. But the other thing I'm angry about has been the lack of direction and guidance. My boss doesn't believe in task lists, is often vague about what she wants for a final product and often leaves things to the 11th hour, meaning there's a lot of opportunities for mistakes. Which wouldn't be a huge problem if she also wasn't so concerned about final presentation and output, meaning there's not a lot of room for error.

But the final bit that makes me angry is learning that my current treatment is due to her projecting from two previous employees. That instead of being willing to work with me, she's already decided there's no way I can change because the last ones didn't.

Processing all of this last night with Grey, we both reflected on what has happened the last few weeks and how that relates to the past few years. Basically how different things are now then they were even a year ago.

• Last week, Grey included me in a text message to our complex manager informing her our home was being cased. A young man was witnessed turning to enter our back patio, then tossing a cell phone and coming around to the front door. Following knocking loudly, he was visibly surprised to find Grey answering the door. Mumbling that his brother had thrown his cell phone into our back patio, Grey closed the door and passed the broken cell phone over the fence back to him. Grey responded all of this by installing a security system while I walked over to the neighboring condo association where I believed this person originated and made contact with the HOA president. Between the two of us, we not only secured our home, but made contact with a neighborhood watch group and set into motion plans not only to remedy the casing (it's one family that are facing eviction very soon) but also to move again soon. 
• In addition to this, Teddy's surgery has been rescheduled because the surgeon made the last minute decision to request a second opinion despite my repeated requests for 2 months. He's now unhappy as I've called him out for unprofessional behavior (and his staff has been dumbfounded), but the result is that now another surgeon is being brought in to address the remaining holes in his ear drums, applying a new type of patch that should resolve the problem and hopefully restore his hearing. 
• We also had some drama with aftercare given that there was a new teacher that Teddy and Maddy were testing. Working with them, we've come up with a plan to resolve this that appears to be working very well. 
• All of this is on the heels of both Maddy and Teddy being reassessed by pediatric development medicine. What we learned is that unlike a year ago, Maddy is testing ahead of her peers and they are impressed with her current IEP as they are not only seeing a striking improvement, but they believe it will help her overcome what remains from her speech delay. Teddy also tested ahead, with concerns that he is on the road to an ADHD diagnosis. But when they learned about the sleep apnea, they expressed hope that we may also see a similar change in behavior that we've seen with Maddy following surgery. We have a referral for OT, but the recommendation is to see what happens following surgery.
• And then there's Grey's job, where after 6 months in his current position, his boss's boss has moved him off his current project (which has been going very well) to a new project that is struggling, promoting him to the role of hiring manager and talking about him building his own team. That and the VP of the company announced last week they are sending him to China for a week. All indicating that not only are they happy with his work, but they are making plans to promote him. All this is contrast to what he was hearing a year ago from one of his former supervisors, who themselves is now facing a potential fallout for poor management, failure to deliver and demonstrating they are completely incompetent. 

Sitting across from me, Grey laid all of this out. And then in an attempt to make me feel better, he told me that though we've been through the wringer before, what we've learned is that sometimes we need things to get so bad that salvaging a situation is no longer an option. That we force ourselves to quit a path that is hurting us, laying the foundation for recognizing paths and opportunities we might have been blind to before.

Despite me knowing this, I'm still struggling. I'm tried of feeling like I'm failing, struggling to dig in for work that I believe is both important and needed. But the truth is, I'm been trying to grow things on infertile ground for a long time now. That though there are those who are doing insanely amazing work, there are also many who don't share my mindset of how to address this need. And there's also demons they are grappling with that can make the work and the environment a poor fit.

So I'm starting again; feeling like I'm traveling done a road I've already been down many times before. The emotions involved haven't been any easier to deal with, but I'm finding that I'm becoming braver about asking for help and absorbing the feedback on what didn't work so I can stop making the same mistakes.