I think I will do nothing at all today and deal with my come tomorrow. I haven’t been sleeping well again and my body is hurting this morning. I could sleep here on this couch for at least another half a day easily, and I think I just might.
Sorry not sorry.
This week has feels like its lasted at least two weeks long and I already know the weekend won’t feel at all long enough but that’s ok. I’ll take whatever I can get.
I spent most of today helping out in the main office. The new school year starts on Monday and we are still moving into our newly renovated building. Nothing is ready. I wish I could have done more to help but I am already at hours and I am not being offered overtime. No matter how much I love my coworkers or how much I want them to succeed I am quite strongly and morally opposed to working for free so I went home early.
Now I’ve got a few cold beers waiting and my wife has promised to pick up a few tacos and an order of sopapillas on her way home. It’s time to start the weekend!
Sometimes people try to help you but only end up making you feel small. Sometimes people giving you more opportunities only reminds you of what you can’t do.
I love what I do, I’m good at what I do, and I am happy doing what I do but I do think I deserve more for my contributions. Instead of paying me more for what I do what I am often offered is more money to do something else and no one can seem to wrap their head around why I might not want that.
I have years of knowledge on anyone else around me. My knowledge is specialized but I have the time and the patience to delve deep. I elevate the standards and keep the liability low. My job is important and having someone confident and competent in my position is important.
But that’s one of the many things wrong with our corporate structure now. The people in power believe that entry-level positions should be filled with low quality, unqualified, disinterested workers, but keeping passionate, intelligent, and interested people happy at all levels should be a priority too.
People can do good work and effect profound change from the bottom and they deserve recognition and support there too.
I tell people that I don’t want to be the one in charge. I tell them I don’t want the lion’s share of the work, that I don’t want to be the “go to” person, the example, or the one making all the decisions. I just want to be part of the team. I just want to do my job for a while. I don’t want to be important. I don’t want anyone or anything to depend on me. I tell people that, but my actions never match my words and I don’t know why.
I feel this overwhelming need to step up whenever there is work to be done. I feel the need to do my part but I’m never sure where my part ends and someone else’s begins. I’m never sure when to stop and I am terrified to get it wrong. I’m terrified to look lazy, or for anyone to have the room to say I’m not a team player or a hard worker. So, I work harder than I need to, than I want to, and than anyone is even asking me to and as a result, I fear I don’t leave room for others to shine.
Tomorrow I will try a little harder to step back and to trust that my team will let me know when to step up again.
I’m not up as early as I’d hoped to be (the story of my life) but I at least got going the moment I got out of bed. I’m spending the morning doing some more pampering—face masks, nail painting, shaving, teeth whitening—before we join all the other beautiful queers downtown for celebration.
We have a whole gay day planned. We’ll have our best gay friends with us to do some shopping, drinking, eating, exploring, and later more drinks and dancing throughout the rest of the night.
I’m excited for tomorrow too when, I hope, we’ll head back downtown again to see the parade. It’s been 50 years since the Stonewall riots, we have a gay Governor, and, for the first time, we have a pride flag hanging from the state capitol. I want to see it. I want to go and be a part of all that progress and joy.
While I agree with Marsha P. Johnson, the revolutionary LGBTQ rights activist, when she said, “As long as gay people don’t have their rights all across America, there’s no reason for celebration.” I do think we need a day to love and celebrate who we are because no one else is going to do that.
Today, we will celebrate, tomorrow, we will remember, and when the weekend is over, we’ll get back to doing the work.
I had originally planned not to go into work today but this is one of the few weeks where I can get more hours than usual and I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to make a little more money. I regretted the decision the moment I walked through the door.
Things were tense at work in preparation for a big meeting with the big boss. All around me minds were working out loud to predict the conversation and plot the outcome. All wanted to tell it like it is, make an impression, and somehow someway find the dignity they’d been missing, I guess. I couldn’t help, and I couldn’t handle it, so I went home early.
This evening has been amazing! We’ve had perhaps too good of a time and now we’re off to bed early without having finished out planned self-care/home spa routine in preparation for Pridefest tomorrow. Oh well, if I head to sleep now there’s a real chance I’ll be able to pull myself out of bed early enough to write and get ready.
The weekend is here and I can already tell it’s going to be wonderful.
Today someone I am attached to professionally violated some established social norms in a spectacular and offensive way, while I was in the room. I did nothing wrong, and I did my best to keep out of the fray but though the violator wasn’t aware, or perhaps didn’t care, I felt the eyes of the room and the wave of disappointment, anger, and disapproval falling on him, and me by association.
I was mad at the violator for the outburst the same as everyone else in the room, but I was also angered by my lack of control over the situation. Suddenly the way I was being viewed had nothing to do with me. Suddenly someone else was acting and speaking for me.
My anxiety has over the years turned me into someone who moves deliberately and with forethought. I rely on my friends and coworkers to give me the space I need to control the world’s perception of me and this person took that away.
I watched, outraged and angry, as he initiated a chaotic situation and acted in ways that left the outcome uncertain. He left me with no choices. He left me with no way to reassert my place or my boundaries. He left me exposed and with no way to salvage anything for myself. This, for me, is his true offense.
I don’t know how I can forgive it.
I’m fortunate enough to work for a district that is big, dense, and well financed. I’m fortunate enough to work in a place that is at the forefront of compliance, knowledge, and implementation of laws and best practice recommendation too, but because we are often the first or the best, there is little room for me to go out and learn from others. Of course, some would say that I should be the one teaching then, but I already do that every day. What I want is a chance to learn. I need is to be challenged.
Today I took a class I hoped to take something, anything new out of and instead I was presented with the same slides and materials I had been studying and teaching for years. I’m glad that others in the class were able to learn something new but I’m exceedingly disappointed that I wasn’t.
Tomorrow I’m taking another class and hoping for another chance at a challenge, but if I once again walk away with what I arrived with I will certainly devote much more of my time elsewhere to find the pieces we are missing and taking the teaching upon myself. There has to be more to know than this.
Well, I didn’t make the 6:00 AM weekend writing wake up time exactly on the dot, but being only 15 minutes late or so after forgetting to set the alarm entirely is quite an accomplishment and I’ll take it.
This morning I’m posting early because a very busy day is on the way and after it starts, I won’t have any time for me until I’m too tired to think anymore.
Last night we found out there is a place giving discount vaccinations, microchips, and registration for dogs so Lola is going to a surprise vet visit this morning, poor thing. After that we’re going shopping for more wedding things, then meeting with our officiant, who is also my cousin, to discuss the script over coffee, and then well go back out for more wedding shopping.
This week will mark just two more months until our big day. I’m starting to believe the hardest part of marriage is being “almost married”.
P.S. Lola did great getting her shots. She’s quite a nervous dog, and I worried she would bark or whine the whole time, or worse try to bite other dogs or people, but she turned out to be one of the most well behaved of all the dogs there. I’m a very proud fur mom today!
Finally, the true Friday has arrived. I’d planned to take the day off from work but I felt guilty knowing I only really needed the afternoon, plus I wanted the extra hours of pay, plus I secretly kind of wanted to be there for our annual end of the year party, so I agreed to come in for half the day.
My little sister, the youngest and last of us all, is graduating from high school tonight. She’s the reason I took off early and the reason I’m feeling so good. I’m proud of her and, I will admit, a little jealous. I’m somewhat jealous of all my younger siblings.
I know in reality they are living their lives the first and only time the same as me, but in my heart, it feels like they are getting the second chance I will never get. They got to learn from me, while I had no one to make my mistakes first. *
I’m so happy for them, but damn does it sting for me.
*Well, I had my parents, but somehow the more we resist them the more we become like them. Parent’s live the nightmare of watching their worst mistakes made again no matter how hard they try to teach, protect, or control their children.
Lisa Marie Blair 