just-run-it-out

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Having a really challenging time at work currently where I’m oscillating between really liking my job and my team and then finding it all a bit too much and wanting to find something else.

I’ve got about 2 months left at my current role and my co-workers say I’ll have no trouble getting on-going but I don’t know if I even want that? The security would be nice but it’s then resigning myself to being there indefinitely.

I’ve applied for one job already with a company I’d feel so lucky to work for as it’s related to one of my ✨special interests✨. The job is within my level but my experience might be a bit too limited. It’s so hard to tell sometimes with certain administration adjacent jobs that don’t require any specific qualifications.

The other one I want to apply for is less responsibility than I have now but for maybe slightly more pay? It’s an APS role though so the application process is a lot more detailed so I’ll need to spend more time on it. It looks like they’re mass hiring in a lot of cities which could be good for me but also bad as they’ll likely have a lot of applicants (or just give it to someone internally).

I didn’t go into the office at all last week and had one day where I only did a half day because I was feeling so stressed about the work. It’s not exactly stressful where I’m feeling demand from others but stressful in the sense that I feel I still don’t have a grasp on how to do everything in my role. It doesn’t help that our team specifically just doesn’t have any how to guide or proper training, so there’s no real reference if you don’t know how to do something. My team is so helpful though which makes it even harder in some ways because I feel like I’m always bothering them with questions.

I’m going to try go in tomorrow though as I have some things I just can’t do at home and I’m hoping that’ll put me in a better mood.

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My work had a q&a with the executive team today and our CEO has changed her stance on WFH to “I have no plans to enforce anything and I’ll leave it up to individual teams to manage what works for them, however my preference is for at least some office time” to “we will be mandating a certain amount of office time in the new financial year” 😒😒😒

Honestly I don’t mind if it’s only 2 days a week (at the moment I go in once a week) but 3 days is just too much when my commute is over 3 hours round trip. I’m aware I accepted the job knowing the location but I did talk about wfh in my interview and they were always happy with 2 office days. I only reduced it to one bcos our team leader went MIA and everyone told me they don’t care how often I’m in.

My team shouldn’t be affected too much because most of us already come in regularly but there’s some teams who have people that only come in once a month. I wonder if some people will end up quitting or just ignoring it altogether.

I at least don’t need to worry about it until July and by then depending on what they decide I can try negotiate what days work for me.

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I knew I wasn’t emotionally ready for season 2 episode 2 of The Last of Us but I watched it any and now I’m broken ✨

I don’t think I’ll be able to watch the final 15 minutes of that episode for a very long time/ever again.

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I’ve been back from Thailand for over a week now and I’m still not over how nice of a holiday it was. I’m not normally a resort holiday kind of person but it was so nice to just have buffet breakfast every day, buffet dinner nearly every day and your only goal for the day being reading and going to the pool. The weather was also consistently like 33 degrees with not very much rain.

We did do a day trip one day to some islands and went out a couple of times to some markets, food places etc. but we mostly just hung around the resort. They also had a super nice gym which I used a couple of times. We were there 7 days but it felt like weeks (in a good way)! I’m already hoping bf and I can afford to do something similar in a few years once we’ve done all the other international holidays we have planned.

It was a celebration with my family for my dad’s 60th birthday which was actually 5 years ago but the holiday got cancelled due to Covid. The only downside was I got gastro midway through and had to miss out on the dinner celebration but luckily I only really lost a day of the holiday because of it and didn’t have it on the plane. My dad got it the day before we flew home and did not have a pleasant flight.

I went straight back to work when we got back but because of the public holidays I’ve been in and out of work. We’ve been trying to navigate people in my team on leave, still not having a team leader and one person departing our team which is meant I’ve been taking on extra work. I’m hoping it strengthens my case to get kept on beyond my contract though.

This weekend we’re going down to the beach for the long weekend after going to the ANZAC eve football game. It’s the last holiday break I’m going to get before I get married in July (wtf??) when I’ll either be asking for a couple of days off or I might be unemployed 🙃🙃

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It’s Friday and I’m finally on annual leave for a week 🥳🥳🥳

The last few weeks have been exhausting and each weekend feels like it’s over way too quickly. The last two days in particular have felt really stressful. It’s my my co-workers last week (except not really because she got offered a month extension in a different team) so we went out for lunch yesterday which meant the whole team was in the office. It’s great to see everyone but one girl (who is so nice) talks a lot and by 10:30am my social battery was already drained and I was feeling myself get behind on my work.

I left work not having accomplished everything I wanted to which normally would be fine because I could catch up today from home but my laptop was just not having it and nothing was working. I kept getting log in errors or programs wouldn’t load so everything took ten times longer. I ended the day with my inbox cleared and my requests up to date though so I’m happy with what I achieved.

Tomorrow bf and I are off to Thailand with my family for my dad’s 5 year belated 60th birthday. Our planned holiday got cancelled due to covid in 2020 so we’re finally making up for it. In my 30s I’ve become an anxious traveler (I tend to catastrophize everything in my head) so I’m a bit apprehensive about going but even if I all I do is hang out the resort and swim, eat food and relax then that’s okay.

I’m mostly worried the cat is going to think we’ve abandoned her (she’s going to the cattery for the first time) or our house will get broken into. Also that something bad will happen on the plane. Just standard ✨anxious thoughts ✨

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It was my office day today and it all kicked off around midday when one of my co-workers put another coworker on blast in front of everyone except it was kind of justified.

Basically one of my coworkers who is officially an ‘admin support’ to our team delegated me a task she’s been doing for our team as her contract is finishing up soon and she wanted to make sure someone would still do it when she leaves. I was a little confused at why she delegated it to me as we have another ‘admin support’ who could do it as it falls within their scope or we could just share it as a team instead. It really doesn’t need to be a one person thing (particularly if I go away or if I’m sick etc.) and it’s also just a really tedious task I don’t want to do lol.

I’m trying to be a ✨team player✨ though so I have just been doing it without complaint and even putting up with her slightly condescending attitude towards me sometimes.

Today I had a question related to the task she delegated me so I asked her to come over and help and my other co-worker was like ‘why is [my name] doing that? That’s not just her job. She has other things she needs to be doing’ and my co-worker who was helping me got all flustered and couldn’t answer why she’d just given it to me to do. It kind of became apparent she’s just palmed it off to me for no reason and it’s not really one persons job it’s for our whole team to do.

Now co worker who delegated me the job has put in a complaint about other co-worker even though her last day is next Friday. What’s even the point? I feel bad that she got spoken to like that in front of everyone (there was a better way it should have been handled) but at the same time I’m so glad my other co-worker said something because I was never going to.

The positive thing to take away from this is I have now gotten out of doing something I really hated doing without even needing to say anything!!! 🥳🥳🥳

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Booked this little terror (I actually love her tho) in for a week over April when bf and I go to Thailand with my family and then a long weekend over Anzac Day so we can go to the beach. I hope she doesn’t think I’ve abandoned her 💔🥺

I’ve booked her in to a place I’ve never been to before about 20-25 minutes from home so I hope they’re nice to her. My whole life we’ve always taken our family cats to this one place in the eastern suburbs who are amazing but it’s just way too far to drive. This place has good ratings so 🤞🤞

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Plodding along at work this week but I’m so ready for the long weekend. Weekends these days feel like they last about 30 seconds in comparison to the work week and I’m not at a stage in my income where I’d feel comfortable dropping to 4 days a week.

Last week in summary:

Caught up with a previous job work friend on Thursday for coffee. She’s someone I wouldn’t call a close friend but I still make a point of seeing every few months because it’s nice to have a local friend (we live in the same suburb)

We had 3 people out sick at work last week so I covered some extra work where I could which kept me nice and occupied

Ended the work week on 2 runs again

Decided to forego the gym at the weekend as bf and I went to visit my parents at the beach for a night

Did a walk up to Arthur’s seat and back - about 1km of it is a steep uphill incline with steps so it’s a good workout

Felt very relaxed and wish we could have stayed longer but now that we have a cat we can’t leave her longer than a night unless we get a sitter or book her into a cattery

Came home and cleaned all 3 of our toilets, sinks and 1 bath

Did 3 loads of washing

This weekend I’m planning to hit up the gym as normal, do a ‘1000 steps’ type walk at a park about 30 minutes away, do some gardening and maybe bake something fun.

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Weekend things:

Ended the work week on 2 runs

Work was uneventful this week which is honestly nice. I don’t have much to complain about these days which is a nice change to where I was at towards the end of my last job

Bf and I did the big shop at Aldi as is usual for Friday nights

Laser appointment in Melbourne this morning so I tied that in with a visit with my mum and sister. We went out for lunch and checked out an open house as my sister is looking at buying with her bf. Man it is brutal out there. Tons of families and couples at every open home and they always sell over the price range.

Lunch pictured below - savory waffles with chicken

Bf went to a pre season footy game with my brother and dad so I picked him up on the way home at the train station

Upper body day at the gym

Home, showered and nearly ready for bed

Tomorrow I’m going to do some baking, go to the gym and hopefully do some of the tasks I’ve been putting off for weeks

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Me: I’m so over going into Melbourne I want to prioritize weekends closer to home

Also me: wow that new ACMI exhibition looks fun I’m going to book tickets and make a whole day of it in the city

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Having one of those times in life where you have so much to do you just don’t do any of it:

Need to book a photographer for our wedding. Haven’t even reached out to anyone and it’s in July

Need a dress for the wedding. I don’t want a traditional wedding dress so there’s no rush but I should at least start looking

Bf & I are going to America in late aug/early sep and I haven’t even looked at booking flights

Owners corporation are doing my head in and everyone else in my strata. We have a committee chairperson now which has been helpful but our owners corp manager is unbelievably challenging to get any sort of information out of. He deliberately ignores questions in our emails or responds with ‘I will do this and get back to you’ but never does. Chair person has suggested we have a teams meeting with him so we can just stop going back and forth which I agree with but I just don’t want to deal with it. I wish we had an owners corp that just did their job.

Other things that are just not that chill atm:

I’m getting a bit over going back and forth to Melbourne every weekend. Some of it is my own fault (looking at you laser appointments which I booked in a suburb close to my parents) but some of it is just me bending to what other people want. I am happy to compromise most of the time and do what others want but sometimes I need to be a bit more firm and say that I want to stay close to home over the weekend for my own mental health

My contract being up in July. One of my coworkers who is a level below me has a contact ending in April and she’s been told there’s no more budget for her. I really do want to move to a different job role and would rather stay where I am. A co-worker on the same level as me insists it’ll get renewed as they ‘need me’ but I know it’s often not what your team needs but what they have the budget for

Other than that exercise is going well, I’m reading tons and getting decent sleep. Our cat is settling in well although she is still really hyper like a kitten despite being over a year old. I got an outdoor cat net area made for her so she can go outside which she seems to enjoy although that doesn’t stop her from running out the front door every time we come home!

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Had a bit of a mental health ✨spiral✨this week and just noped out of work/life for two days but I did pick myself back up pretty quickly even if I still don’t feel 100%. I ended the week on a high note with nothing but positive feedback from my acting TL during my 6 month PDR and caught up on most of my work by the time I logged off on Friday afternoon.

Whenever I have a period of bad mental health I tend to get overwhelmed by how messy I’ve let things get and then need to overcompensate by doing a big clean so that’s what I spent most of today doing.

Bf mowed the lawn and I did a big tidy of this dirt/gravel patch in our backyard that had basically become a dumping ground for broken pavers, dirt and weeds. We were originally going to dig up the area and put grass seed over it but we’ve decided to work with it instead and turn it into some raised garden beds.

I also weeded as much of the other garden border we have left as I could, sprayed weed killer over it and put whatever mulch I had left over it. Tomorrow we’ll probs go to bunnings to get the garden beds and more mulch. I’m excited for how our back yard is going to look. I’m annoyed at myself for letting it sit there for so long.

Inside the house I cleaned our entire en-suite bathroom that bf mainly uses and our other main bathroom that I mainly use

Tidied the dining table which as most people know, becomes an everything table for things that don’t have a place

Dusted our bedside tables, dresser and upstairs windowsills

Tomorrow I’m hoping to finish off the garden, maybe rearrange and tidy the garage and cull some clothes to donate.

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Now that my team leader is basically unofficially not coming back, his boss who is kind of our acting team leader has taken it upon herself to do our personal development reviews/goals. Today she messaged me at 4:47 after I’d just clocked off asking if we could ‘chat’ so I said yes even though I was shitting myself.

Turned out she just wanted to quickly go through my 12 week review that I never got to complete months ago and she left me some of the loveliest comments. I thought she didn’t like me very much but she must have had a good impression about me. I really hope this means they’ll renew my contract in July.

She wants to do my actual 6 month pdr/goal setting review next week so I hope I can bring up that I hope to stay on beyond my end date.

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Woke up just before 4am today to buy tickets for my fave band’s American tour and wow what a shit show. This is the first time they’ve done a tour with no fan pre-sale so it was entirely general sale which meant there was thousands/tens of thousands of people in the Ticketmaster queue to get tickets.

I paid $30-$40USD per show (I’m going to 3) in just service fees alone (Australian fees don’t seem so bad now)

Ticketmaster used dynamic pricing 😒

General admission was gone almost instantly according to people who got on the buy page immediately

I’m just happy to be going even if I got seats which aren’t super close. Bf is coming with me to one show as well so it’ll be cool to share that with him.

Now we get to do the exciting bit which is planning our trip, booking flights etc. My parents have very generously offered to give us about $5000 to put towards our ‘honeymoon’ if you want to call it that so we’ll probably put that towards our flights which will be the most expensive bit. Then all we need to worry about is hotels.

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Busy but nice long weekend:

On Saturday my parents visited bf and I to meet our new cat and go to our wedding venue for a food tasting. The food was great and they really liked the venue

Gym didn’t happen that day but I did do a yoga video mostly for mobility and stretching

Sunday started off really dramatically. Accidentally gave myself a blood nose that bled so much I nearly passed out. The circumstances it happened in were kinda funny but the aftermath was not lol

My sister came over to visit our cat. We got rolls from the bakery and came back to eat them at our place. It was probably the first time I’ve enjoyed hanging out with my sister in a while so idk if she’s realized how she’s been coming across to me or if I just caught her on a good day

Gym happened - upper body

Had a guy come out to quote for an outdoor cat area. I’ve had 3 people come in total to quote and this guy said he’d beat the quote the others gave me. It’s going to cost between $2000-2160 but the cat loves going outside so I want her to be able to have that as an option

Today we visited our marriage celebrant out past Malmsbury (about 50 minutes away from home) - she seemed really nice and organised. We then hit up a bakery before coming home

Came back to recycle some cans for cash, put a load of washing on and chill before we go to the gym this afternoon

I am so tired. I’m not ready to go back to work but at least it’s only 4 days

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I’m looking at getting some cat netting/a catio type thing installed in my backyard and I suddenly just got all this anxiety over needing to tell my neighbors because it’s going to be attached to our shared fence even though realistically they won’t care and will probably just appreciate being told but like what if they don’t and get mad at me???

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I love my bf and I love living with him/being in a relationship with him etc. but sometimes I fantasize about being single and only having to cook one bulk meal a week for dinner or being able to have girl dinner where I just have a plate of stuff that takes little to no preparation time. Maybe I need to encourage more meal prep on the weekends so we don’t need to cook as much during the week 😅

Today is Tuesday and supposedly the return date of my team leader. This is probably the fourth or fifth time we’ve been given a ‘start date’ for him to come back only for him to just not come back. This time our acting manager told us he was coming back 1 day a week wfh (starting today) with no team leader duties except his teams still has his out of office on/no sign that he’s online. It’s possible he’s just easing back into it and doesn’t have teams open but that doesn’t seem likely.

As much as the whole situation has just been a huge fuck around I really hope he’s okay. It’s odd for someone to just disappear like that from work - the last time that happened in my workplace it turned out the girl had been hiding a pregnancy from her abusive partner and then gave birth to the baby 😳

This week is full of so many household and life responsibilities:

Contacting and meeting a celebrant for our wedding

Filling in forms for the celebrant and getting them certified

Researching and booking my cat in to a cattery for when I’m away in April

Having a catio company come to quote an outdoor space for our cat. I wasn’t sure if I was going to do this if she wasn’t interested in going outside but she loves our backyard

Visiting the wedding venue this weekend with my parents to try some of the food

We do have Monday has a public holiday so I at least have some time to recharge from this week. I’m debating whether bf and I should go to the beach but I’m not sure about leaving our cat alone for a night by herself. She already hates when we have to lock her outside our bedroom in the mornings because if we leave her unsupervised she chews our charging cables.

UPDATE: our acting team leader work just messaged everyone to say our team leader didn’t come back today and she doesn’t know when he’ll back back 😐