The Cloud in the Silver Lining

Tags

anxiety, choice, employment, GAD, generalized anxiety disorder, jobs, life decisions, stress, worrying

I got the damn job.

To make it worse, the lady offering me the job is so NICE. She says that they are “excited to have me joining the team” and “looking forward to seeing me” and that she will arrange my schedule to be sure that I am out before my daycare closes.

Yes, that’s right, I’m COMPLAINING about how NICE she is.

“Carol always manages to find the cloud in the silver lining,” PH said over the phone to my mother today, which made her burst out laughing.

Let me walk you through my mind:

In order to determine how I feel about something NOW, I need to know how I will feel about it in the future. I’m afraid to be happy about something now if I think there may be a chance I might regret it later. So here are the future scenarios running through my mind:

Scenario A: Maybe I’ll love the people at this job, and won’t be offered the awesome charity job that would be perfect for me. I will be overworked from trying to work full time at my job PLUS the dog training business, and never see my family, but at least I will like my workplace.

Scenario B: Maybe I’ll love the people at this job, and will ALSO be offered the awesome charity job that would be perfect for me. Then I’ll have to choose between a full time job in a setting I don’t like but with awesome coworkers, and disappointing people who have been awesome to me and who I enjoy working with in order to pursue a more “ideal” job that may or may not pan out.

Scenario C: Maybe I’ll find myself in a similar situation to last time – feel incompetent, feel disliked, be generally unhappy. I won’t get the other job either, and I’ll just tough it out until the dog training business gets big enough that I can quit.

Scenario D: Maybe I will feel incompetant but then get the other job, and will leave feeling like a failure but at least I’d be going to a more “ideal” job.

Scenarios A and D are preferable, and I still dislike both of them.

I didn’t sleep much last night. I’m near tears most of the time. PH is alternately worried about me and frustrated as hell with my I’m-doomed attitude.

I can’t help it.

The future just… scares me. I have no idea if things are going to be okay.

Worrying About The Wrong Thing: Anxiety Girl Strikes Again!

Tags

anxiety, decisions, GAD, generalized anxiety disorder, jobs, problems, stupid, worries, worrying

One of the things they kept telling us in my Generalized Anxiety Disorder group was that we worried about the wrong things.

Our obsession with worrying about everything actually CAUSED problems because we’d be so busy worrying that we would let problems build and build until they became HUGE problems.

Which was exactly what we were worried about.

Something else we learned was that our worries always tended to end up at the same place. Heather Armstrong says that when her daughter makes a mistake in her piano practice, she visualizes a series of catastrophes that end in her living in a cardboard box.

Well, that’s fairly typical, I have learned.

For some people, that ultimate fear is ending up homeless.

For others, it’s ending up dead.

For me, it’s displeasing people and making bad choices.

Doctor sends you for blood tests because your sore throat could be a sign of a serious problem? Pfft. Not worried. Maybe it’s cancer, but it is almost definitely not. Certainly nothing I can control if it is cancer (which it isn’t).

Need to make a serious decision that will end up disappointing someone? BIG PROBLEM.

I hate making decisions. What if I make the wrong one? What if this single decision alters the whole course of my future life? What if this decision turns out to piss someone off? What if this decision makes me a bad person?!

So now I’m here, waiting for a phone call, worrying that I’ll be OFFERED A JOB.

You read that right. Not worrying that I WON’T be offered a job. Worrying that I WILL.

Last Friday, you see, was a big day for me. I landed a big job on Elance, and a national dog charity put up a part time job posting in my area. Suddenly I had a plan – I would train dogs, work part time for a charity doing something I KNEW I could do well, and make extra money on the side as a writer.

It was like ALL MY DREAMS COMING TRUE.

Then I got another call. From a vet clinic.

This clinic is a sort of rival to my previous employer. She was his employee, and when she left to start her own business, three quarters of his staff decided they’d rather go work for her.

So when she asked me to come in for an interview, I could be really honest.

…I told her exactly why I was no longer working there.

…I told her that I have severe anxiety around anesthesia now, thanks to Mean Vet, who she used to work with.

…I warned her that if she was looking for a surgical tech, I might not be a good choice.

She said she liked me a lot. She thought I would be a good fit at her clinic. She appreciated my openness and my candor. She always made decisions like this jointly with her staff, though, so she would talk it over with them and get back to me on Friday. Would I be available to start next week?

So now I’m scared.

If I get this job, I should definitely take it. A bird in the hand, right?

She seems nice. She and her employee vet introduced themselves by their first names, which is a nice change from the old place where I had to call them “Dr So-and-So” all the time.

But I don’t want it.

Why?

Because then what if I also get the job at the charity? 

WHAT IF I HAVE TO CHOOSE?

I SHOULD be worried that I WON’T get this job.

I SHOULD be worried that I won’t get ANY job.

But instead, I’m terrified that I may have to make a choice. I may have to let someone down – someone who took a chance on me.

It doesn’t help that I have so much anxiety about working in a clinic that just the THOUGHT sends my heart racing.

So… to sum up…

I’m waiting for a call, scared that I will be offered a job.

When I should really be scared that I won’t.

It’s Karma Or Some Crap Like That

Tags

interviews, jobs, making a good impression, negative thinking, self esteem

So, as some of you saw on Twitter yesterday, the SAME DAY my work broke up with me, I got a phone call from town hall about the job I applied for IN JULY.

I have an interview on Thursday.

The religious folk in my life, like my mother and Daycare Lady, are sure this is a sign from God.

I’d almost believe them except for one thing:

It’ll be a behavioral interview.

I have never EVER gotten a job from a behavioral interview. I SUCK at trying to come up with a “time when you and a coworker had a dispute” or at time when “you solved a problem at work.”

PH has tried to help me prepare and ended up practically bashing his head against a wall.

I can’t help it that when someone asks me a question like “tell me about a time when you had to work with a difficult coworker”, a truthful answer would be:

Well, I worked with this vet who was verbally abusive to me. So I just took it like a total doormat until he got sick of working with me and quit!

Somehow, that’s not what they want to hear, but that’s THE TRUTH. And no, that’s not what I say at the interview, but even when I try to come up with a story, I guess it doesn’t fit the question well enough or it just isn’t what they want to hear.

Because they never call back.

I’m terrible at trying to find the right story to fit their question, and PH has identified that I’m absolutely PATHETIC at identifying successes or triumphs in my workplace past.

I also feel that my best qualities are not easily represented in sweet little short stories with happy endings. I’m honest. I’m diligent. I have integrity. I am kind. I defer to my superiors.

But they don’t want stories about that. They want stories that present me as consolidated awesome in scrubs, and I’m awful at it.

I’m so going to fail this interview.

Does anyone have a cheat sheet for me, with the magic answers?

I FEEL LIKE POO

Tags

fail, jobs, unemployment, work

My work broke up with me VIA EMAIL.

Found it in my inbox this morning. It was actually sent shortly before I left for work yesterday, so I was actually laid off but didn’t know it yet AS I WORKED.

Gist:

Dear Carol,

You don’t work for us any more. We aren’t busy enough to justify employing you, and we don’t value you enough to keep you over someone else.

Love, Boss’s Wife

I was going to have to quit soon anyway, because my hours were getting less and less. But I still feel like a big useless ball of fail.

FAIL.

I Gots To Get Paid

Tags

entrepreneurship, jobs, starting a business, work

Well, tomorrow is Mean Vet’s last day, and that means that my hours are being cut down, as of next week.

The boss is going to try to run two clinics at once, going back and forth between them.

Right now I’m only scheduled for 3 and a half days next week.

I spoke to my dog training friend and we’re going ahead with registering our training business!

Does anyone have any advice or warnings when it comes to advertising a new business, making a business plan, running a general partnership, etc?

 

Edit: This is my 500th post! I feel like I should offer a giveaway or something in celebration.

SO.

I will mail something complete useless and of no financial value to a random commenter on this post! Deadline to leave your name for If By Yes’s Big Exciting Gift Of Crap will be Dec 1st. 

Should I Stay Or Should I Go (Fear of Change Says HELL NO)

Tags

anxiety, change, jobs, moving, Nova Scotia, transfers, Vancouver

PH and I have always talked about going back to Nova Scotia some day.

After all, we don’t like that our son is growing up away from his grandparents and all of his cousins.

We don’t like that he may not know all the words to “Barrett’s Privateers” before the age of ten.

We don’t like that he may not know a Halifax donair if it fell on his shoe.

Most of all, we just think of ourselves as Nova Scotians, so obviously, SOME day, we want to “go home”.

But in the future.

You know.

Like, not right now, but maybe some day.

Sometimes, when I get really frustrated with living in the city, or when homesick for old friends, or for my mother, I have wanted to go home RIGHT NOW.

But usually it’s… “maybe in a couple of years”.

So when a job came up in Nova Scotia that PH would be perfect for, we didn’t know what to think.

I mean, what, leave Vancouver?

No more mountains? No more sushi? What about Owl’s awesome daycare? What about our diaper service? What about all of our friends, whom we would leave behind?

And yet…

The job was in a perfect location. Just half an hour away from my parents, and a little over an hour to his parents.

And then we looked at housing prices and we just started SALIVATING.

2,000 square feet and an acre of land for half the price of our current 1,000 foot townhouse? NO PROBLEM.

So we made a pros and cons list. It looked like this:

• PRO
• close to family
• cheap houses
• VERY cheap houses
• close to Carol’s old friends/boy cousins
• same salary, lower cost of living
• Carol either doesn’t work or does dog training at home
• No daycare/Nana Daycare
• Have we mentioned the house pricing?
• Cause it’s cheap, you know
• Seriously, $70k for a three bedroom HOUSE
• not condo, HOUSE

• CON
• moving expenses? How cheap is PH’s company?
• Negative equity in house currently YAY GLOBAL RECESSION PLUS SCREW YOU MORONS
• No Happy Nappy 
• All of our Vancouver friends go byebye
• Daycare lady would be sad 😥
• No vet tech job for Carol, probably
• Carol would have to take up prostitution
• or dog training
• one or the other
• but probably prostitution

Ultimately, we realized that the universe was calling our bluff. When fortune just hands you the thing you’ve always said you wanted, you have to go for it. We’d be chicken not to.

So PH applied.

Well, it turns out he’s the best candidate by a country mile and they really want him.

What they aren’t sure of is whether they can afford to help us move out there.

What WE aren’t sure of is whether we can afford to sell our house right now, because the housing values are down and we don’t want to end up in a negative equity situation.

All of this is causing me massive anxiety because you KNOW how much I love uncertainty.

And change. Don’t forget my love of change.

I keep alternating between dreams of a big house and a dog-daycare that I run out of my own home, and joy at the thought of leaving my job… and complete panic at the thought of leaving all the people here, not least my awesome daycare lady who had gone above and beyond the call of duty for me and Owl.

I waver between excitement and terror.

I don’t want to go!

I don’t want to stay!

I want to go, I just also want to stay!

And then, the next morning, I woke up in a sweat and shook PH awake.

“I just realized. We CAN’T go to Nova Scotia.”

“Why not?” he mumbled into his pillow.

“THERE’S NO ANTON’S IN NOVA SCOTIA.”

Anxiety Girl AND Working Mom – I’m Doubly Screwed.

Tags

anxiety, babies, family, GAD, jobs, work, working mothers, workplace

You know the effect – you learn a new word, and suddenly everyone is using it. A friend buys a new car, and suddenly you think you see her car everywhere.

Well, look what I’m seeing everywhere:

I GET IT, BABIES ARE BAD

 It was on the radio, too. I heard it as I was pumping away at work:

“A recent survey reveals that 80% of employers claim that they try to provide a family friendly workplace, but many admit that an employee is more likely to advance if they don’t have family commitments.”

I don’t know what to do. I’m not happy in my current job, but how hire-able am I with this baby in tow? What if the good places won’t want me? It doesn’t help that I am rusty at certain aspects of the job – I haven’t done surgery in years, for example, which gives the mean vet lots of opportunity to rake me over the coals.

I’m a good tech. I am great at lab work, I am fantastic with clients, I know animal nutrition and pharmacology, and even radiography. But I feel like all my workplace must see in me is my milky boobs and my sleep-deprived mental state.

PH still thinks I should leave if it doesn’t get better, but he also reminds me that a lot of this is my own inference. No one has actually SAID anything to me about my milky boobs, and no one has actually SAID (other than the mean vet that they all say I shouldn’t take personally) that they think I’m incompetant.

But they don’t make me feel like I’m not, either.

I don't usually like Natalie Dee, but damn, THIS IS ME

I’m pretty sure that just thinking about the upcoming week at work should NOT make me feel like my heart is going to explode.

You know I don’t ask you guys to “share” me around much. But if you could share my previous post a bit… tweet it or something… I would appreciate it. I am hoping for more encouraging feedback. The more stories I hear from women who found a good job despite a baby, the better I will feel…

In Which I Learn That Motherhood Is Bad For Business

Tags

breastfeeding, daycare, employees, employers, hiring, jobs, schedules, work, working mothers

Yes, I’m blogging about work because… well, I don’t care any more.

Work is…

…not going well.

While I always knew that motherhood restricts life in many ways, including in the workplace, I never really fully comprehended how much it damages me in the eyes of an employer.

I did know that employers look down on breastfeeding mothers, which is why I expressly (pardon the pun) avoided discussing my breastfeeding ways in the interview stage, and why I was so dismayed by my boss bursting in on me pumping guiltily in the bathroom on my first day.

But I didn’t really grasp how very undesirable motherhood is.

Good employees don't have one of these

Before I signed the employment agreement papers, I brought up my daycare’s hours.

It hadn’t come up in the interview because, well, it hadn’t come up. He didn’t ask, and I wasn’t even sure, at that point, what my daycare’s hours were.

But before I agreed to work there, I made it clear that my daycare closes at 5:30 pm, and that official policy is to charge me 5 bucks per 5 minutes that I am late. I asked if they had morning or afternoon shifts available.

I was told yes, there usually is an earlier shift and a later shift, leaving an employee alone in the clinic for the first and last two hours of each work day, and two in the hectic middle times. I asked if it would be okay that I could only work the earlier shift.

I was told yes, that it shouldn’t be a problem.

Ever since then it has been a problem.

I get a job if my “final mark” is good…

Tags

employment, jobs

Yesterday was the strangest “interview” I ever attended.

To be fair, I knew going in that it was not an interview so much as some kind of group testing. I figured it would be one of those fill-in-the-bubble tests with questions like “have you ever told a lie?” and then if you answer “no” they know that you are a liar.

The night before I wondered aloud if I should be boning up on basic animal care stuff, since the “test” was for a position working in an animal shelter (for HELLER good pay – 22 bucks an hour!). But everyone poo-poohed that, saying it would be standard pre-screening psychology stuff.

So I was a little surprised at what I actually got.

They led me into a room filled with desks and women. Each of us had our own desk, and were provided with a pencil, a pen, and an eraser. We were told that extra paper was available if we needed it.

Then they told us that the “exam” was an hour and a half long, and that the required mark to pass was 65%. They said that those who passed would move on to the interview stage, and that the interview would count towards 60% of of our “final mark”, with the “exam” making up the other 40%.

Is this a job application, or a class??

Anyway, I didn’t really care. I’m good at test writing and the questions were fairly simple, although of course I am only guessing at what answers they are looking for. I have always tailored my answers to my professor, knowing the prof’s little quirks and odd opinions. This was completely blind, though.

For all I know, when they asked me for the symptoms of kennel cough, they were looking for an answer of “purple and green spots, a hoarse singing voice, and a tendency to dress in rubber bondage wear.”

On the other hand, considering that this job ad didn’t require any specific education (like my tech diploma) I bet they did weed a lot of people out. But surely more specific credential requirements would have done the same thing?

This Bites

Tags

babies, biting, breastfeeding, jobs, teething

Oh my gawd, this child is being a real pill lately.

I assume that it is because his top two teeth are coming through, but not only has his sleep been haphazard and painfully short most days and nights, but we just had an hour long wrestle-session in which he repeatedly screamed for booba, and then immediately chomped down with his little white razor teeth the second I GAVE him booba. Then I would yank the nipple out of his mouth and he would wail heartbrokenly.

Aaaaaaaaargh.

Good news – that job I applied for a ZILLION years ago? Well, I finally have an interview for it next Wednesday! Now I just need to figure out what to do with Bitey McScreamsalot while I’m off at the interview…