Career thoughts
Now that my side project of planning my 2 year old’s Sesame Street birthday bash is over, I find myself searching for another creative outlet. Don’t get me wrong, I still am creating at the studio. But in a way, that has shifted to be my “job” in my brain. For example, every Tuesday, when I go to the studio to get stuff done it almost feels like I’m clocking in for work.
Not in a bad way at all, but in a reliable way. Like I’m keeping working hours and sticking to a schedule. I’m trying not to let myself feel like I’m entering a rut. I’m not. But something about the repetition harkens back to when I had to be at my desk every day by 9 am Monday through Friday. My decision to shift towards a creative focus rather than choosing to go back to a corporate work environment is not something I regret at all. I just feel like I keep having glimpses of what my life was before my kids were born and it’s like remembering a bad relationship. My relationship with my career was complicated.
The last 2-3 years of my corporate life was a mixed bag of career advancement and abuse. I would land contracts and be excelling in my day to day but then I’d be told it wasn’t good enough over and over. The mentality of trying to please a business that was unpleasable can drive someone to feel so badly about themselves and their self worth.
I remember working at the same company as my (now) husband and feeling like it was his fault that he was valued at work and I wasn’t. The anger I felt towards a system that encouraged pitting people against one another leeched into my relationship with him. It wasn’t his fault that the company valued his work more than mine. It also wasn’t his fault that my team would be working overtime and see zero monetary compensation for our efforts. The company would position it like we didn’t work hard enough or efficiently enough while we were regularly staying an hour or 2 late daily to hit unreasonable benchmarks. Conversely, my husbands' team would work hard but get rewarded with outings and team dinners to celebrate hitting goals. The inequality made our personal lives difficult.
It’s a strange feeling to be so proud of your partner for their achievements and the accolades they receive while also being resentful and wishing you were treated the same.
I ended up moving to another company because I felt like there was no room for me to grow within the organization. That's when I started to feel appreciated and like my work mattered. Fast forward a bit and then all that came crashing down when that new company deemed my entire department as “unessential” and set us on a course of furlough to laid off over the next 6 months.
It’s funny looking back and realizing that a company that supplied food to people decided that compliance and regulations were not essential during a literal global pandemic but I guess that’s why I wasn’t in charge of business decisions at that point. Sometimes making sense is not good for the bottom line.
