A setback, and a slight turnaround

This past week has been unsettling for me. I have been feeling irritable and short-tempered, and have been having a lot of negative feelings. I have been feeling less-than, and like I am not up to the mark in various areas. My husband has also been stressed and we seemed to not be communicating correctly, leading to misunderstandings. Yesterday, he reassured me that we were just on different pages and that we can do a better job of talking about things. We had a good talk and things are better, and he made me feel like it was mostly in my head and that I am doing things well. I've not been feeling great physically but I think it was from tiredness and usual ups and downs. I am actually starting to feel better today (touch wood).

The setback that I'm going to write about is regarding my work. A brief background: I have been struggling with my career for a while now. I went after a new project in December and got it, to my delight. I was hoping it would be my ticket to getting my career back on track, and enable me to take my first foray into leadership. I have been very excited about the scope of this new venture. As I worked on it and started peeling off the layers of the onion however, I realized that our current implementation is not very good and neither is the documentation. There are levels of overhead that make it hard to use, and it is not very well-aligned with our market. I was struggling to reconcile my time working on it because the implementation details were something I did not want to touch with a ten foot pole. I wanted to focus on the protocols and their application, the overall architecture, if you will. The technology itself is interesting, and I still believe it is the way forward in our sphere of networking. I have a strong conviction about this.


Well, now to get to the setback. I found out today that this project is being handed to someone else, who is relatively new in our industry no less, and that he will be starting his own team to do it (surprise, surprise! /end sarcasm) - exactly what I was hoping would be given to me. I also found out about this in a circuitous manner by getting copied on an email that casually alluded to it.

A wave of disappointment flooded over me. I still do not have clarity on what this means for me. But yet again, I have been sidetracked, and have not even been told what this change is going to be. My hopes of getting into leadership have been thwarted again. A few more months of my work and hopes might have gone down the drain. I also feel a sort of relief, but I cannot put my finger on why. My conviction is not rooted in my current platform and group very much, and I have an idea about which one I would rather work on since it has a more promising future. So maybe I am heading there? Or it could be that I am just grasping at straws as I go down....looking for silver linings, thinking about failure as a stepping stone to success, who knows?!

All of this makes me feel stuck and hopeless. We are on a layoff freeze, so at least I have my job for the next 60. Days, that is. We are going through a reorganization and things are likely going to be in flux for a while. Companies around me are aplenty, but hiring freezes and unemployment are also our current reality. I have to hold out the hope that I can use this time productively to learn, polish up my skills, and "will" myself towards a successful career opportunity, even if it happens to occur exactly where I am.

Sigh. Self-doubt is creeping in again. Should I have done more, and made a big splash about this project rather than working in my little corner? Or maybe it would all have been futile, and no matter what I had done I was just in the wrong place. I am not able to get out of this rut. There is a small part of me that wonders - if I had been given the added responsibility and a chance to grow my career, could I have stepped up to the plate? Or would I have totally blown it? With all the balls I have in the air (mainly very young kids and my current focus on health and wellbeing), is a career advancement really something I can focus on and do well? I feel like it's been so long that I have become rusty - not in the work itself but in the idea that a work day is 8 hours. Or am I just looking for a cop out? Doesn't everyone want to focus on their kids and health and career? What makes me so special that I cannot do it? In some ways, quarantine ways of work are exactly the way I like to work. I have my clan around me all day, I don't have the guilt of spending less time with my kids and I am able to fit in work all through the day. More importantly, everyone else at work is going through the same juggling of schedules and there's no judgement for working from home, as long as we get our work done. Sometimes, I may be nursing my toddler but my mind is working on how to solve the next problem at work - that counts for something, yeah? The existential crisis is real.

I want to end this post on a positive note, or at least offer myself a glimmer of hope.
So I tell myself: In this time of utter uncertainty and confusion, I turn to you again, oh indomitable spirit; I truly hope you prevail!

UPDATE: So after getting some clarification, the project isn't gone from me, at least not yet. "They" are still trying to figure it out, but it looks like I will still get to work on it and maybe work with the other person on some aspects - aka cross-functional collaboration - you know, the thing that makes all other things vague. I might also have something new assigned to me, but I'm not really sure it's something I believe in. Hopefully I won't get fully sidetracked again.

[Read Update 2 at the very end for the slight turnaround I referred to in the title of this post]

I listened to the song below very loud and it helped to get a bit of my don't-care defiance out so I don't wallow. To make myself feel better, maybe I'll call the new guy drivel head ;) Maybe not, since he's not that significant at the moment and I've always enjoyed this song.

Line Up - Elastica (you need to have the song playing in your head as you read the lyrics below, it's useless otherwise!)

Drivel Head wears her glad rags, 

She's got her keys, money and fags,

I know that her mind is made up,

To get rocked.

Drivel Head needs a new man, 

As only a drivel head can,

He's a hormonal nightmare,

So beware.

Another victim of line up in line,

Line up in line is all I remember.

Oh, how their favours change,

You could have been kinder.

Yes, yes, line up in line,

Line up in line is all I remember.

Oh, how their favours change,

You could have been kinder.

Drivel Head knows all the stars,

Loves to suck their shining guitars,

They've all been right up her stairs,

Do you care?

Drivel Head knows all the bands,

Knows them like the back of her hands.

You can't see…


Update 2: Well, things took an interesting turn. A couple of weeks have passed since my original post, and in that time I took the lead on an important project that someone else had dropped the ball on. This got me a lot of visibility and attention from upper management and I got a monetary compensation for my efforts, which is always nice. It is also a good sign during these uncertain times, since it gives me a bit of hope about my job futures.