Sunday Ramblings ~ 3/21/21

I’ve calmed down a bit from this morning. Still two things are sticking with me. Hard to shake the feelings. Writing has always helped me do that. Shake the bad feelings away.

Do I whine? Spew the angst to release the hounds. Or should I do something better? Words are just that. Nothing. Bleh. No action. Though I agree with the platitude “words matter”. Words can scar as easy as physical harm in certain instances. Some of this calls for action. Cut! yells the director of my life. Which is me of course. Silly Jilly.

Okay, first up. Friday I received an email, the entire company did. The email contained what I consider to be bad news. Not earth shattering bad but more irritant/inconvenience bad. Something that was a long time coming. The convo to deal with the news went something like this …

Me to B after hearing that come 7/6/21 I will be returning to HELL aka Hybrid work model: Do you think I have saved enough to be able to retire at 55?

B: Uh we’ll never know since you’re already 57.

Me: Wait. What? Liar. LOL You’re 57!

Me continued: How old am I? Am I really 56?

B just looks at me.

B: Why do you want to retire all of a sudden. You love your job.

Me: Their moving us back to the office.

For those who know me, I went into Work From Home (WFH) silently kicking and screaming. My boss called me during Spring Break 2020 and said do not go back in. Me the self-proclaimed introvert was like a cat on a hot tin roof. I learned very quickly that I am not an introvert in the least. In protest, I worked off a TV tray in my living room from my tiny screened laptop. I occasionally moved to sit up at the bar between the living room and kitchen but mostly I didn’t get comfortable on purpose because THIS was temporary.

I made a routine of it. I got up and dressed like normal. I took my morning walk like normal. There were minimum things I did to deal during the pandemic. Originally I worked obsessively until I started to settle in.

Eventually I ordered my docking station and moved into Pony’s old bedroom. I ordered my wireless headset. I stopped working weekends. I even took much needed vacation days off. As days turned into weeks turned into months then over a year I got comfortable. I have become very greedy about my TIME.

Time is all any of us have anyway. Right? I don’t want to waste my time with a hybrid model for fucking appearances sake. Which BTW is why I believe we are doing this. And it is not fair. For me, the company has won on this deal. I have not missed a beat. And I was rewarded in return with less stress and less commute.

Of course life is not fair. Everyone is different and the company has lost on others who are not productive in a WFH setting. I get that. I also get I have zero say in this situation. Like the good little girl I was raised to be I will do as I am told. All with the certainty that others on my team will find ways to push their agenda. Some may even get what I crave. That is how things were before the pandemic. Why would I expect them to be different afterwards. Ugh.

Will I be brave enough to speak up? Considering life has changed me over this past year, maybe I will be brave. Make my case. While we wait for more details to come mid-April, I think I will quietly plan my exit strategy. You know … Cut off my nose to spite my face. Another Ugh.

Whew! I’m exhausted. I do feel better by admitting some of this stuff. Things are not as gut-twisty. I know I’m extremely lucky to even have a job considering so many others did not fare as well. We were spared from the virus hitting us directly. Several un-virus related things we have dealt with this past year were way worse. And some were life-savingly better. Overall I say we are blessed.

And with that, I’ll quit complaining. Suck it up buttercup. I don’t have it in me to spew about topic #2. Maybe I’ll do that in Thursday Thoughts. Oh well. Lemme let ya go.

As always, more to come.